During his interventions in the National Congress of Fenalco, the director of Fedesarrollo, Luis Fernando Mejía, and the former minister Mauricio Cárdenas They referred to the current panorama of the country, as well as the “polycrisis” that “the next government” that comes to power “could face.”
In turn, former Minister of Finance Mauricio Cárdenas referred to the “polycrisis” that the next government that comes to power would face, in which five “critical” points can be seen.
“These crises would be focused on: gas and shortages, energy demand, the health crisis, insecurity and fiscal problems. As a reflection, I propose that in this polycrisis problems such as Gaviria’s blackout, Pastrana’s fiscal crisis, Uribe’s security crisis will come together and it will return to the Social Security model,” said Cárdenas.
Former Minister of Finance Mauricio Cárdenas during his speech.
Courtesy
For his part, Luis Fernando Mejía said that tax reform is “inconvenient and inopportune“, since it incorporates harmful elements such as modifications to the tax rule, the wealth tax on national companies and the carbon tax.
“The reform also reduces the threshold to be subject to the wealth tax, increases the marginal rate for the highest bracket from 1.5% to 2.0% and includes legal entities as taxpayers. Currently, only four countries maintain this tax: Norway, Switzerland, Spain and Colombia, the first three only for individuals. In practice, wealth taxes generate distortions in savings and investment decisions, encourage capital flight and have negative indirect effects on other macroeconomic variables such as employment, economic activity and tax revenues.”Mejía noted.
Faced with the proposal of tdouble the carbon tax rate and include coal in the tax base, Mejía explained in his speech that this tax could increase by about 20% “the variable costs of companies that use coal as a production input.”
“Fedesarrollo estimates that this increase in coal costs could reduce the net profit of these companies by an average of 15% each year until 2028. Likewise. It will be necessary to analyze its potential effects on inflation in more detail”Mejía added.
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