Introducing a tax on dividends and changing taxation practices in regulated sectors will be a burden for the business environment, according to employers who took part at a session of the Economic and Social Council on Monday. "The package of legislative changes - submitted at today's session - contains 26 bills and two regulations. As many as 15 of them are claimed to have a negative impact on the business environment - which is a lot," said Republic Union of Employers (RUZ) vice-president Ľuboš Sirota. In particular, he criticised an amendment to the law on corporate tax which, for example, includes the taxation of dividends and the increase in special levies for companies working in regulated sectors. "It affects the business environment in a way that Slovakia may simply become less attractive. We discussed the impacts in the case of special levies. In the insurance sector, for example, it may affect its services and consequently this can be reflected in consumer prices," said Sirota, adding that the Government Manifesto pledged to improve the business environment over the long term.
Finance Minister Peter Kažimír (Smer-SD) pointed out that the government in its Manifesto agreed on reducing direct taxes. The proposed package of tax laws includes reducing the corporate tax rate. "For all the companies concerned, the rate should be reduced from 22 to 21 percent next year," said Kažimír. Moreover, the ministry envisages the scrapping of health contributions from dividends and replacing them with a tax. As for adjusting the taxation in the regulated sectors, Kažimír noted that this levy is a form of taxation for companies that operate in a regulated environment. "We don't consider this regulation to be perfect either. It includes companies that are very rich, they earn money out of hundreds of thousands of clients in an environment that is often close to a monopoly environment and achieve large profits. Thus, these companies can contribute to the revenues of the state budget a bit more," said the Finance Minister.
