RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Senator Stephan Rasmussen based his position against an eventual tax increase on the productive sector, under consideration within the framework of a new tax reform plan, in open reference to his colleague Blanca Ovelar’s proposal, who advocated for a tax increase after the approval of raises in the Senate.
The legislator of the Patria Querida party affirmed that taxpayers are being undermined more and more and receive less in return. He criticized that there has been no progress in terms of improving public spending and the recent salary increase approved in the Upper House.
“In the Chamber of Senators and the National Congress we proposed to revert this increase. It is 14 billion guaraníes, a quite significant increase. And as we all know, in public service once the salary is increased it can no longer be reduced, generally for years”, he questioned in an interview in Unicanal.
The parliamentarian mentioned that after having tried unsuccessfully to prevent the approval of the salary increase in the Senate, the discussion on the need for new taxes ensued. “In the same session, it is said: here what we need is that the State takes more money from the taxpayers through more taxes and that will solve the problem”, he recalled.
Mismanagement and impunity
On this point, Rasmussen indicated that the problem is not tax collection in Paraguay, but corruption in the management of public money.
“The problem we have in Paraguay is not money, we had the 1.6 billion dollars to prepare the health system and once again corruption, impunity and mismanagement were the headlines throughout this year,” he referred.
He questioned the incongruence in which some legislators fall into by supporting salary increases and, at the same time, proposing new taxes. “There is always talk of taking more from the taxpayer, but no progress is ever made on how that money is spent and how to improve that spending,” he pointed out.
Source: La Nación