Gustavo Petro: if the budget is not approved, subsidies will be cut for the rich in Colombia
From the Editorial
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, September 29, 2024, p. 19
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, warned yesterday in his X account that, if the Financing Law is not approved in Congress, all subsidies to the rich sectors of the population will be cut.
The president’s position came after the president of the Senate, Efraín Cepeda, assured in the National Congress of Business Merchants that he had the votes to sink the 2025 budget because it was subject to unclear sources of income, such as the tax reform, which is being processed in the legislature and is worth 12 billion Colombian pesos (almost 2.87 billion dollars), indicated the digital magazine Week.
While I am president of the Senate I will not be a notary of government initiatives that do not come from consensusdeclared Cepeda.
In this context, the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, sent a second tax reform of the government to the secretariat of the House of Representatives on September 10, this time with the intention of adjusting the accounts to finance the 2025 budget, which since A start considered 523 billion pesos (a little more than 125 billion dollars).
According to the initiative, the reduction of income tax for companies is proposed gradually from 35 to 30 percent, and up to 27 percent for micro, small and medium-sized companies, among other measures.
Value-added tax (VAT) rates that are not paid, including online sports betting or accommodation services in private homes (such as Airbnb), or products that have a lower rate than the general rate, such as hybrid cars , which pay 5 percent, would rise to 19 percent.
With this new legislation, some 2 billion pesos (more than 48 million dollars) would be raised, and with hybrid vehicles, another 3 billion (more than 717 million dollars).
The Colombian media quoted the official, who explained that there will be tax benefits for sectors specialized in renewable energy, in addition to tourism in entities with less than 200 thousand citizens.
