There is this fear in the private sector that after the elections we will see a new wave of tax increases to balance the public budget, Radu Burnete, executive director of the Concordia employers’ confederation, said on Tuesday. Invited to a show on Prima News, Burnete says that we have many taxes that distort economic activity.
“The pole tax is just one of them. We have a tax on the turnover of the largest and most productive companies in Romania, a tax that has capped the margins of many of them terribly. We have special taxes on energy, although I do not think that this is how taxes should be set in an economy. You need to have a tax system that does not distort, that does not discriminate between industries, a tax system that promotes innovation and productivity”, said the Concordia Head.
Burnete recalled that at the end of last year, business people woke up almost out of the blue with the increase in the dividend tax or the elimination of some tax facilities.
“The economy is slowing down, after it slowed down last year. We said it then too, that the budget is built on a very optimistic growth scenario. This year we see the same thing. The public budget is built on a 2.5% growth, but we see many reasons for concern. We would have preferred the government to be rather pessimistic and wake up with a pleasant surprise at the end of the year, that the economy grew above expectations. It would have been better than being very optimistic and having another unpleasant surprise at the end of the year,” he explained.
- “We spend money when the economy grows and when it slows down, we wake up that we need to increase taxes. We need to break this cycle,” Burnete opined.
He also points out that we need to make investments in the energy system so that the price of energy in the medium and long term decreases. We would like the budgetary philosophy to be more of a tool to direct the economy, not just to close a deficit, concludes the head of Concordia.