Prague, March 14 (CTK) – The authors of a draft amendment raising tax reliefs for blood donors and introducing them for bone marrow donors have withdrawn the legislation on Tuesday by which they enabled Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) from including a proposal taxing the yields of some one-crown bonds in it.
“I cannot reconcile myself to the relief for the donors becoming a hostage to a political struggle,” Vera Kovarova, (STAN, for opposition TOP 09), said on behalf of the amendment authors.
She said the taxation of one-crown bonds can be solved otherwise and that it is not fair to burden the bill on blood and bone marrow donors with it.
Babis said he regrets the development and that he supports the bill.
He said the lawmakers probably do not want owners of one-crown bonds taxing them.
“I will propose it again because I believe that it is correct,” Babis said.
The taxation would also apply to him. In 2013, he bought one-crown bonds of Agrofert holding which he owned then.
Kovarova said she will submit the tax relief amendment soon again.
The taxation of one-crown bonds according to Babis’s proposal would impact dozens of people who did the same as he. The taxation would apply to bonds which firms’ owners bought from their firms and also to people economically interconnected with them.
It would not apply to one-crown bonds which the state offered to inhabitants under former finance minister Miroslav Kalousek (TOP 09).
Babis’s initiative is criticised by BDO Tax partner Marek Moudry.
“I believe that unless a public interest in such step is duly justified in further negotiations, this proposal exceeds the limits of admissible retroactivity. From the point of view of legislative purity, this proposal is exceptionally bad,” he said in a press release.
Moudry said Babis’s proposal would substitute for the work of tax offices, “or a situation where the tax office can identify the abuse of law by a tax paper in a specific case according to the existing legislation as well.”
The possibility of issuing non-taxable one-crown bonds was introduced in the first half of the 1990s. Current TOP 09 chairman Miroslav Kalousek, when he was finance minister (2007-13), applied it for state bonds for inhabitants. Later firms also started to issue them.
Babis bought ten-year bonds with a 6 percent interest, which his Agrofert holding issued in December 2012.
He is now suspected of tax optimisation because the yields on such bonds are not subject to a 15 percent tax. In addition, the firms which issue the bonds deduct the interests costs from their tax base. The opportunity to issue untaxed one-crown bonds ended with an amendment to the law in 2013.
