Former Prime Minister Teodor Stolojan says that if the government wants to cut spending, it has 75 billion lei at its disposal to cancel some fiscal incentives, saying that if not all, then half of them can be canceled. He noted that there are professional groups that do not pay income tax and health insurance contributions.

On Wednesday in Prima News Stoloyan was asked what is the best solution: flat rate taxation or progressive taxation.

“We have a source of increasing revenues to the budget, actually two important sources of increasing revenues to the budget, without relying on the progressive system. In the 2023 budget, there is a calculation made by the Ministry of Finance of all tax reductions compared to the general quotas, amounting to 75 billion lei, which is 4.8 percent of Romania’s gross domestic product,” says Stoložan.

In his opinion, if the Government wants to reduce the deficit or reduce expenses by this amount of 20 billion, then “it has 75 billion and cancel tax benefits. They will not be able to cancel all these 75 billion, but at least half of them can be canceled. What are we talking about here? Well, we have professional groups that don’t pay income tax, they don’t even pay health insurance premiums,” Stoloyan explained.

He noted that the second main source of income is the reduction of tax evasion.

“The second big source is obviously tax evasion. We continue to fight for the digitization of fiscal institutions, other institutions in Romania, which, unfortunately, lag behind in this area. Therefore, we have the opportunity to ensure the reduction of the budget deficit foreseen for this year,” Teodor Stolozhan also stated.