Playing on the Danilo Medina campaign promise of “doing what has never been done,” the editorial in today’s Diario Libre (Friday 26 October) focuses on the way the government has added a new tax on fuel in the taxation package to establish a multi-million peso fund to benefit the same group of private transport business owners who call themselves unions but are more known for their vandalistic and monopolistic control of public transport in the country. Editor Adriano Miguel Tejada writes that the government is budgeting for another Plan Renove, penalizing “those of us who consume gasoline, including the beauty parlors that run on backup power generators to keep on operating in a blackout.
Tejada asks: “Is what you call doing what has always been done?” making the point that the only winners of the taxation reform are the bullies of always.
He also points out other sections of the new taxation bill that he says make him want to cry such as new taxes on vices. He mentions the taxation on the winners of lotteries. He writes: “Wouldn’t it be better to charge ITBIS to all who play in order to reduce gambling?”
He also says that taxing small businesses is the wrong way of formalizing the sector. He said that this would encourage businesses that operate informally to stay informal. [The bill establishes that informal businesses need to pay an annual RD$12,000 to the government.]
Tejada says describes the bill as “lacking in reason” and not meeting the principles of legality, justice, fairness and equity that the Constitution demands.
Diario Libre reports that the taxation bill sent by the Medina administration to Congress includes a new tax of RD$2 on each gallon of gasoline and diesel and 25% of the funds will go to sponsor fleet renovation programs for the transport unions. As reported, in September 2010 the government reached an agreement with the transport operators to create a fund with RD$1 of each gasoline gallon so that at least 6,000 transporters could change their vehicles.
Transport expert Hamlet Hermann said that granting concessions to the transporters does not help solve the ongoing transport problems. Instead, he said the concession is bribery of the sector, and evidence of government complicity with the transporters.
www.diariolibre.com/movil/noticias_det.php?id=357245
www.diariolibre.com/opinion/2012/10/26/i357264_que-siempre-hecho.html