President Zeman signs first bills

Prague, March 18 (CTK) - New Czech President Milos Zeman Monday added his signature under the first bills after being sworn in as head of state on March 8, including an amendment binding churches to pay income tax from possible sales of returned property, his spokeswoman Hana Burianova told CTK.

Another bill that Zeman signed into law is an amendment to the law on explosives.

Czech churches should pay taxes in the sale of movable as well as immovable items that will be returned to them within the property settlement with the state. They will only continue to be exempted from income tax in acquiring the property.

The proceeds from the taxation are estimated at half a billion to two billion crowns.

The state is to return to churches property worth some 75 billion crowns that was confiscated from them by the communist regime.

Besides the return of property, the state is also to pay churches over the next 30 years a financial compensation of 59 billon crowns, increased by inflation, for the property that cannot be returned to them because it is now owned by municipalities and regions.

At the same time the state will gradually stop covering clergymen's salaries totalling to 1.5 billion crowns annually.

Under the law on state-church property settlement, churches were to be exempted from tax because the transfer of property and its sale were exempted from tax under the general restitution law of 1992.

The amendment to the law on explosives make registering and labelling of explosives easier. A new system of monitoring explosives will be introduced in line with the EU rules.