MINSK, 1 November (BelTA) – A progressive scale of the income tax may have to be introduced in Belarus sooner or later. Chairman of the International Affairs Commission of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus Andrei Savinykh made the relevant statement in a recent broadcast hosted by the YouTube channel of Igor Tur, a political analyst of the Belarusian TV channel ONT, BelTA has learned.
The MP believes that the government may have to abandon the flat scale of the income tax and replace it with a progressive one sooner or later. “Then there is the real estate tax. If a person owns several apartments or houses or ten cars and so on, we need a progressive taxation scale here, too. I think we are moving towards it. It is a trend the entire world follows. It will be done sooner or later,” Andrei Savinykh is convinced.
BelTA reported earlier that the introduction of the progressive scale of the income tax is open to debate. The possibility was discussed during an online conference hosted by BelTA's website about a year ago.
At present the rate of the income tax for natural persons is 13%.
Belarus used to have a progressive income tax scale in the past. The rate of the income tax varied from 9% to 30%. Most of the citizens paid the income tax rate of 15%.
Experts identified a number of disadvantages of the progressive taxation scale. Those included higher costs of tax administration for individuals and corporations and the potential desire to hide some of the revenues in order to pay lower tax rates. The Tax and Duties Ministry noted that revenues from the income tax increased in the first year after the flat taxation scale was introduced. This step also helped recover some of the shady revenues.
