Santo Domingo.- The Democratic Option (OD) party reiterated this Thursday its rejection of the Fiscal Modernization Law, “which, despite its name, basically tries to increase taxes that will deepen inequality, malnutrition, the housing crisis and poverty in the country ».
The party pointed out that more than 70% of what is intended to be collected with this proposal is based on consumption taxes, such as the ITBIS, which are regressive because they apply to all people equally, without taking into account the differences in their income. .
In that sense, the political organization invited legislators to put themselves in the shoes of Dominican families.
“You, honorable legislators, have luxurious salaries compared to the average salary of 33 thousand pesos in our country. But they can put themselves in the shoes of a family that, with that salary or much less, has to buy more expensive onions, garlic, groceries, meat, beans… Or has to pay more for the rent of their house, the vast majority of which will go on to pay the Real Estate Asset Tax or IPI. You legislate for the Dominican people, all the Dominican people. And for the vast majority of Dominican families, the increase in the cost of food and basic products (including digital services, which are a basic need in today’s world) and the increase in the rent of their homes, will have an impact. terrible,” said the member of the Political Directorate of the party Virginia Antares when speaking at the public hearing in the National Congress.
The former candidate for the presidency of the Republic maintained that we have already been suffering from the high inflation of recent years; We have the third lowest minimum wage in the entire region and the city of Santo Domingo appears in the rankings for having the highest rental costs in all of Latin America.
“The government then, and you as legislators, should be promoting measures to lower the cost of living in our country, not increase it,” he stated.
He said that it is unfair to ask us Dominicans to pay more when this same National Congress has not eliminated clientelist and illegitimate expenses such as the barrel; when the government wastes more than 8,000 million pesos annually on propaganda; or when losses in the electrical system have increased in the last 4 years. It is unfair to ask us to pay more when education, health, transportation, drinking water and the rest of the public services in our country continue to be of poor quality.
The party recalled that the ITBIS was created by the PRD government and Jorge Blanco in 1984 and was 6%. In 1992 the government of Balaguer’s Reformist party increased it to 8%. Then, the PLD and Leonel Fernández governments increased it to 12% in 2000 and to 16% in 2004; and finally the government of Danilo Medina took it to the current 18% in 2012. Thus, in just 40 years we have gone from not having ITIBS to an increasingly higher ITBIS and applied to more and more products in the basic basket. How far are we going to go?
When asking that the reform proposal be rejected, the party presented its proposal: that of carrying out an audit of the public debt, which is already around 60 billion dollars. “There are resources there.”
