President Luis Abinader has defended the Fiscal Modernization Bill as one that was not improvised but acknowledged the generalized rejection when on Saturday, 19 October 2024, he announced he would remove it from the agenda of the National Congress. Abinader says the structural changes were proposed to reduce dependency on foreign financing to meet local needs and eliminate distortions and privileges.
The National Budget Bill 2025 presented to Congress on 27 September 2024 did not include the extra resources the fiscal reform would have generated.
During the entire week and a half since the government released its “modernization” plan for a new set of taxes, and even before, much of the news coverage has been devoted to the various sectors that have been predicting doom and gloom if the tax reforms were passed as proposed. The modernization plan was so all-encompassing that there were few sectors left untouched.
Days before the public announcement of the tax plan, the rum makers were telling the public how their sales were down by some five million liters since 2021. When the plan was announced, literally all heck blew up.
Brewers, cigarette and cigar makers, hoteliers, builders, actors and directors (even Francis Ford Coppola!), motorcycle taxi drivers and owners, evangelical churches, and pensioners were all up in arms. The public hearings held by the Chamber of Deputies were simply a series of explosive invectives against the plan, the government, and the President.
And it all came to naught. President Abinader addressed the country Saturday evening, and calmly rescinded his tax plan during a 6 minute speech televised across the nation. He said that although the plan was necessary for as a guarantee for the sustained development of the nation, there was not enough public support for it to be installed.
He noted that the plan had been well studied, and was aimed at reducing the national debt, strengthening tax collections, and optimizing government spending. He once again made his point that in a democracy, constant dialogue is needed and that the lack of a consensus was what motivated him to withdraw the legislative proposal.
Diario Libre editorialized that President Luis Abinader’s announcement on Saturday, 19 October 2024 serves as a “light at the end of the tunnel.” At the same time, the newspaper’s popular cartoonist reminded the government that before submitting another proposal, the government itself should adjust its spending, and the newspaper’s editor stressed the importance of maintaining the country’s competitiveness.
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Esta Misma Semana
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21 October 2024