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Between the box and the trust

2021-04-25T17:28:42.515Z


Those who propose the tax reform do not know or do not want to know that other Colombia where more than half of the people live in informality


A woman holds a sign during a demonstration in Bogotá, on April 16.RAUL ARBOLEDA / AFP

I write this column from Bogotá, where we debate whether it is time for a tax reform.

From where it is discussed, that it is not in the territories of poverty and unsatisfied basic needs, we speak of not losing the degree of investment;

The yuppies of the financial world justify the urgency of a collection of 23 trillion pesos (more than 6,000 million dollars) for the distribution of solidarity income for the most needy and to cover the deficit of Colombian finances in times of pandemic.

Those who call the most needy, for those who say that the tax reform is fundamental, who prefer to call the sustainability law, are the peasants whom this reform punishes for guaranteeing food security. Because those who propose it do not know or do not want to recognize that other Colombia where 60% in the cities and 86% in the countryside, live in informality. Tax reform, yes, but not like the one under discussion in Congress, because it is precisely not sustainable.

They take food out of the exempt regime from paying VAT (value added tax) and begin to charge VAT on their inputs, making their production costs more expensive. The peasant who sows, who raises pigs and other animals, will also have to pay taxes on the food he has to give to the chickens. Then the one who buys the chicken, if you can afford to eat chicken once a week, it will obviously be more expensive. The sacks in which we export our coffee or cocoa will also have to pay VAT, and so on to the tractors and even the scythers. As the president of the Colombian Farmers' Society (SAC), Jorge Enrique Bedoya, has stated, the social stability of rural areas and an agent of change for the substitution of illicit crops, is punished.

It is not surprising.

It is the incoherence of government that we should be used to by now.

12 million people living in the countryside, of which half are women, are transparent for this project.

And I am not saying that reform is not necessary.

It must be reasonable, concerted, collecting the work of the commission of international experts who proposed structural solutions, listening to the serious proposals of Fedesarrollo.

Otherwise, it will end up affecting job creation when the unemployment rate reaches 17%.

More information

  • Iván Duque proposes a tax increase to cover the fiscal gap of the pandemic in Colombia

  • Colombia's tax reform includes a basic income

Taxes on the construction sector, which practically saved the Colombian economy from collapse in the last year is another of the inconsistencies, or the attempt to record solar energy when we ask to walk towards a world of renewables.

It is not feasible to change the tax scheme without a labor reform that compensates the impositions.

And they also forget that they told the scarce 40% of formal employees in Colombia, a large part of the middle class, that their savings for housing were exempt, that paying for health when we are sicker and more vulnerable is not a sumptuous expense.

But they have no shame in contradicting themselves.

These ministers lack street and life who, from theory, think that everything is collected without controlling the evasion in the corrupt customs and the “sananders” that please the bad taste of the nouveau riche.

The reform that has confronted the political parties and even threatens to cut the fragile thread of the government and its party in electoral time, has revealed something that the philosopher Norma Jimeno wisely expresses: “I imagine a country where the relationship with taxes was easy, based on trust. Our tax problem, beyond the deficit, is the lack of trust in the institutions that plan it, in which they later manage the collection ... "

He is right, how can we trust when we are seeing every day how they came to rule, how they returned us to war, how they have increased the polarization that they offered to end, how they invest in combat aircraft.

What confidence can a citizen have who reads the reform and sees how they propose to record funeral services at a time when 420 Colombians die every day from covid.

That is indolence.

We need a reform that simplifies the VAT, makes it smaller and covers more products without touching food and public services, a reform accompanied by real savings in bureaucracy, transparent in investment, without exceptions for religious friends who vote on their knees in the elections, but above all that he listens to economists who know the country and its needs.

The impulse to sink it or save it passes by arranging it, improving it, but, above all, by respecting ourselves, by gaining the trust of the citizens who are failing every day.

To entrepreneurs who today wonder if their orange economy is to charge them for the effort when they are just starting to do business.

We have a cash problem, no doubt, but the biggest problem is that those who handle the cash register do not deserve our trust.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-04-25

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