“The Minister of Finance has today made a proposal that he will propose in the budget a refund of the rates of 20% for the restaurant and hotel business – something that we cannot support, due to the fact that we have made commitments to our voters and we cannot we lie to them’.
This was stated by GERB deputy Desislava Trifonova, quoted by BGNES.
“Furthermore, such unilateral decisions by the Minister of Finance, without coordination with the GERB political party, are absolutely unacceptable for us. So we think that first of all the dialogue with the industry should be restored, the proposals should be reviewed, and only then should it be assessed whether any rates should be raised”, emphasized Trifonova.
Alexander Ivanov, referring to the statement of the Minister of Finance, also noted that the GERB-SDS parliamentary group finds the lack of dialogue unacceptable.
“Mr. Vasilev, as finance minister, was supported by the PG of GERB-SDS in the adoption of the budget for 2023, where a large part of the measures in connection with brightening the economy and increasing the collection of tax revenues in the treasury and social security ones were supported , so any other type of measures, sharp movements in connection with this increase in tax rates, has not been discussed reasonedly with the PG of GERB-SDS and will not be supported at this stage,” the GERB deputy is categorical.
According to him, this will have a great impact on business, on consumers, and on the possibility of competitiveness on the Bulgarian hotel and restaurant business.
Lyuben Dilov-sin, for his part, said that the hotel business, the tourist business, has traditionally demonstrated a desire for dialogue and they have made several proposals for clarification. According to him, the idea of introducing a patent tax was quickly rejected, pointing out that the patent tax is one of the tools that can make the differentiation between the different types of restaurants and establishments, which the general legislation does not currently do.
“In general, we think that this topic needs a lot of conversation and dialogue, and the government will not lose anything from this, but will only gain, because it will understand that this is a complex matter, extremely directly related to tourism,” added Dilov and noted that the summer season was not one of the best.
The deputy from the PG of GERB-SDS emphasized again that this decision of the Minister of Finance is very hasty and he sincerely hopes that Vassilev is just testing the terrain and is not thinking about it seriously. “Because if he is serious about it, he will meet very serious resistance,” he added.
Dilov added that there are several things that need to be discussed with the guild:
“The most important thing that politicians do not understand, no matter what party they are from, is that officials are for the service of the citizens, not the other way around, and very often the parliament makes this mistake – it passes laws that are at the service of the administration” .
Dilov is adamant that the leading thing should be the interest of the people, who ultimately generate the funds that sustain the government and the deputies in the parliament.
“It’s something that I don’t think is understood on a philosophical level. And purely pragmatically, we recall the words of Asen Vassilev, it will maintain a 3% deficit under these conditions, under which it finds the management and tax policy. At the moment, there can’t be much support for this statement he made,” said Dilov and added that they would first wait for the finance minister’s reaction and possibly some debate in the parliament.
“At the end of October, the proposal for a new budget must be submitted, and earlier it must be announced for public discussion,” he noted and stated that they would not agree to Vassilev’s proposal, because they would cheat on that, what they promised. “And he himself cheated on his own words when we adopted this budget,” added Dilov.
Source bgnes
