The CTA Autónoma (CTA-A) led by Pablo Micheli rejected Monday the income tax reform voted last week by the Congress. “It is a law that keeps 80 percent of the workers -who are taxed- as taxpayers,” he said.
In a statement, both Micheli and Deputy Secretary José Rigane, criticized the income tax reform project and said that the “intended solution” achieved in “the frantic negotiations between the government, most of the national legislators and those who say that we must continue paying, produced a law which keeps the 80 percent of the labor force as payers of this unfair tax.”
“The leadership of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) endorsed this procedure, which has had poor results for most of the affected workers, because there will be no update in 2017, as the approved legislation indicates that it will be implemented from 2018 on. Therefore, salary increases achieved in collective bargaining negotiations in order to face real inflation will take the situation back to the current values,” he said.
Micheli explained that “the scales voted to put the tax deduction into effect are insufficient and have no relation nor is it proportional to the distortion created by the freezing of scales during the last few years,” and added that “most workers will be taxed more if they receive an improvement in 2017, especially the first few months.”
“The inclusion of a part of the extra hours in the deductions authorized by the law will produce salary inequalities among those who fulfill them in working days or Sundays and holidays. There are production and services branches in which the extra hours cannot be divided or accumulated to avoid full payment. In the case of children they will be deductible up to the age of 18, so a good part of the married workers will lose the supposed ‘benefit’ of the new scales and aliquots and will start to tax as if it did not have offspring,” the statement argued.
Likewise, both leaders said that the mechanism to deduct a part of what’s paid under the concept of rent “is cumbersome and does not admit the high levels of informality and disproportion existing in the relationship between the owner and the tenant in favor of the first.”
Micheli and Rigane called for “a country with a progressive tax structure, in which those who earn more pay more taxes, and work and production are stimulated, instead of financial speculation, gambling and polluting activities.”
“The CTAA wants a nation for the workers, for the people and not only to ensure high profitability for the banks. The income tax is confiscatory, illegitimate and unconstitutional. The Magna Carta, the international treaties and the Law on Contract of Employment consider that regular contracts of employment and the remuneration must be protected,” they stressed.
Finally, both leaders expressed that both workers and the trade union movement must discuss “new strategies to achieve the elimination of this tax in the context of a tax reform.”
