It is scandalous that in all these attempts to increase revenues to the budget, there is only talk of raising taxes, but there is not a single word about reducing tax evasion, argues lawyer Gabriel Birish, a tax expert and former state secretary of the Ministry of Finance.

“As far as VAT is concerned, we could remove about 3-4 billion euros a year from the money flow that the thieves have connected to, just by applying reverse taxation, and the Directive allows us to,” he told the CLCC conference.

Asset taxation that cannot be justified

“Regarding the situation of individuals, I don’t see any discussion about the taxation of assets, which cannot be justified, nor about the transparency of amounts parked through tax havens,” Birish says.

Our taxpayers, he says, have no obligations.

“Billions of euros are parked outside, dividends are not taken, you are not required to declare, and you buy all kinds of houses on the Cote d’Azur, Dubai, buy yachts,” the lawyer explained.

By not resolving these issues, the Government is losing its chance to gain confidence in this matter.

They want to increase the excise duty on alcohol, but the collection is not increased

“I have not seen any analysis of the Government on the level of excise duty on alcohol, where I assess the situation worse than the VAT collection. The moment you see from statistics what alcohol consumption is, and you look at the level of budget revenues, you understand that you have an incomprehensible hole somewhere around 40%,” Birish said.

• “You raise excise taxes, but do not take measures to increase the collection? It seems counterproductive to me.”

“Benefits are a cancer because not only do they erode the tax base, but they create a distortion of competition because if I have a juice factory here and a brewery next to it, it will be much easier for me to take workers away from the brewery. that he has no exception. It’s the same in construction,” he says.