The Czech Republic’s political crisis—culminating with the surprise resignation of its prime minister this week—is unlikely to change the government’s current tax policy, according to a senior finance ministry official.
“I am not a politician, but as deputy minister for taxation, I don’t see a problem” from the crisis, Alena Schillerova, the Czech Republic’s deputy finance minister for taxation and customs, told Bloomberg BNA in a May 3 interview. “The political situation has no impact on European directives, which we are obligated to implement.”
Petr Toman, a tax partner at KPMG Czech Republic, agreed that the current political crisis will have a “minimal impact” on the country’s near-term tax policy.
“Most of the laws that the government intended to submit to the parliament had been submitted by the end of April,” he told Bloomberg BNA in a May 2 telephone interview.
According to Schillerova, the last major point on the government’s tax agenda—a tax package introducing faster refunds of value-added tax, domestic reverse charge for the supply of construction staff, and a blacklist of unreliable taxpayers—was signed into law last week.
The few remaining issues on the tax agenda include a proposal to close the legal loophole—the same one that allowed Babis to pay no tax on interest income from 1.48 billion koruna ($60.2 million) worth of corporate bonds he purchased from AGROFERT in 2012—and an amendment to the Czech Republic’s law No. 164/2013 on international cooperation in tax administration, according to Schillerova.
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