IONEL BLĂNCULESCU: "The Prime-Minister promised he will amend the pole tax next year"

Prime-minister Victor Ponta promised he would intervene on the decision to implement special constructions tax, nicknamed the "pole tax", starting with January 1st, 2015, if it is proven that after the second deadline for its payment, namely, September 25th, 2014, the impact of the tax in question will be higher than initially estimated, Ionel Blănculescu, honorary advisor to the prime minister said yesterday.

He says that budget revenues can only increase if taxation is decreased. When it comes to cutting taxes, the members of the Coalition for Romania's Development have a proactive attitude, says Ionel Blăcnulescu, who mentioned, among other things, that the representatives of this structure are talking to Victor Ponta on the amendment of the special construction tax.

Once the second payment delay goes by, an impact assessment of the tax on special constructions will be conducted, Mr. Blănculescu also announced.

"The International Monetary Fund has reduced the scale of the impact (ed. note: of the application of the «pole tax») from 1.5 billion lei, as the Ministry of Finance had initially estimated, to just 400 million lei, because they thought that Romania was not capable of fully collecting such a tax", he said.

Gheorghe Gherghina, secretary of state in the Ministry of Finance, yesterday said that there will be no problems this year in terms of the reduction of the Social Security Contributions, because the budget has earned far more than its estimated effect through the "pole tax": "We have that pole tax, we have a much higher amount than what was initially stipulated in the budget. (...) We had budgeted 448 (ed. note: million lei) and we will collect 1,455. For next year, we have two options. First of all the pillar tax, with a much higher rate of collection - will remain in effect next year. Second of all, there are some measures concerning collection". Even though the business sector has repeatedly emphasized that the new tax would have a major negative impact on the whole economy and that companies would see their investments plans invalidated, the authorities did not react in any way and took no step to change the provisions in question.

Considering that, in spite of the opinion of the representative of the mission of the IMF, the Government supports the cut of the Social Security Contributions by five percentage points, Victor Ponta stressed, last month, that the Executive would get additional revenue from the taxation of special constructions, far higher than the very cautious target set with the International Monetary Fund, representing one of the main arguments in favor of the social security contributions.