The tax reform proposals that were sent to the Chamber of Deputies by President Mejia failed to win approval in this first attempt and were returned to the Finance Commission for further study. As the first item on a 94-point agenda, the tax package never got off the ground because legislator Marino Collante, the chairman of the Finance Commission, requested that the deputies give his team another day to present their final report. The Chamber of Deputies president, Alfredo Pacheco, agreed and asked the deputies to return the bill to the commission. A vote of 110-1 concurred to send the bill back to the Finance Commission.
Collante promised that by today the bill would be sufficiently prepared to face the chamber, as 95% of the work was already prepared. Collante said that during the two weeks of 10- to 12-hour days, they scrutinized 106 proposals that were submitted to the commission. The final document will put forward several of these proposals.
Passage of the bill is unlikely to happen today, however, since both the PRD?s political commission and the PRSC?s executive commission have meetings scheduled for today to discuss the fiscal reform. The PRD party, which has a total of 72 of the 150 legislators in the Chamber, will receive the final amendments prepared by its technical committee at 4pm today. Meanwhile, the top members of the PRSC will study the commission?s proposals in order to take their stance in the Chamber. Collante promised that there would be pleasant surprises contained in the proposed legislation for the poorest sectors of the population.