
QCOSTARICA – The government of Luis Guillermo Solis aims to revive the corporation tax, which was declared unconstitutional and suspended in January, supporting a bill promoted by Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) legislator, Nidia Jiménez.
The initiative seeks to address the mistake of not making public the changes made by legislators in 2011, when the new tax was passed, according Jiménez.
In January, the Constitutional Court declared the corporations tax law null and void.
The new bill, presented last month, is awaiting debate in the Legislative Committee on Legal Affairs (Comisión de Asuntos Jurídicos).
Fernando Rodriguez, Deputy Minister of Revenue at the Ministry of Finance (Ministerio de Hacienda), told Nacion.com that “… We hope to have broad support from legislators to restore the tax. During the discussion itself we intend to improve aspects of the project such as a proper definition of what is a dormant company. There are companies that fall into this category, but are used to register goods. ”
However, there are legislators, like former presidential candidate and leader of the Movimiento Libertario party, Otto Guevara, who do not support this measure, assert that is negatively affects small and medium businesses.
Alan Saborio, CEO of Deloitte, specializing in tax consulting, said the (Constitutional Court) judges did an argument for the constitutionality of the tax, but the legislative process. The tax expert added that legislators, with the new bill, can deal with topics not scrutinized by the judges.
Source: Nacion.com