Without benefit there is no justification
Andrea Grijalva, an economist specializing in taxation, stressed that this municipal chargewhich in most cases is even greater than the property taxhas already been defendant as unconstitutional.
“It has never been sustained how what is collected is spent, nor how the level of benefit of people. This level of arbitrariness is repeated in the majority of local governments”, he limited.
In the case of Quito, the Constitutional Court already declared unconstitutional and inadmissible the municipal rate of security and citizen control. This is because, like the contributionsfees can only be charged if the benefit to the citizen.
The structural problem is waste
Santamaría pointed out that the underlying problem is that, from the state budgetlocal governments receive a good part of the oil revenues and of the national collection; but that money wastes in bureaucracy Y inefficient works.
“When they run out of resources, they abuse the contributions for improvements. We citizens do not care and we only return to see the municipalities and the prefectures when they want to charge us more,” he asserted. (JS)
“The provincial councils have served to create employment and nothing more. We have 24 prefectures and more than 200 municipalities to whom we deliver millions a year”. Napoleón Santamaría, tax lawyer
The need for works forces to put contributions
According to Edwin Herrera, director of roads for the Prefecture of Pichincha, the need to carry out works forced them to make a special contribution, as he said in an interview on FM Mundo.
The official assured that 52% of the 7,200 kilometers of roads in the province are reached with maintenance. However, at the same time he recognized that only 600 kilometers have asphalt.
Likewise, he stressed that the special contribution for improvements, which will be collected from 2022, is a response to the fact that State transfers were reduced by around 30% compared to what was received three years ago.
