The law providing for the reimbursement of taxes and fees to economic agents of Gagauzia from the autonomy's budget instead of the state budget was published in Monitorul Oficial (the Official Journal of Moldova) and will take effect on November 1.
The relevant amendments to Article 6 of the Tax Code were adopted by the Parliament on October 5, while the President of the country, Maia Sandu, promulgated the law on October 20. The document was published Monitorul Oficial on October 21 and will take effect on November 1. As InfoMarket reported earlier, the draft law stipulates that reimbursement of VAT and excise duties paid by economic entities of an autonomous territorial unit with special legal status is carried out from its budget. If the amount to be reimbursed in connection with these types of revenues exceeds the amount of receipts after the budget execution is completed, the difference is covered by means of special purpose transfers from the state budget in the next budgetary year. The Gagauz authorities opposed the adoption of this law and expected that the President would not promulgate it and would pass it to the parliament for revision. The leadership of the People's Assembly of Gagauzia also planned to discuss this issue with representatives of the U.S. Embassy and the EU delegation in Moldova. The authors of the draft law noted earlier that, contrary to the principles of budgetary and local autonomy, VAT reimbursement in favor of economic agents in ATU Gagauzia is made at the expense of the state budget. It turns out that Gagauzia collects VAT in its budget, but these own sources do not participate in the reimbursement of the same taxes. Only in the last 5 years, the central budget reimbursed ATU Gagauzia more than 640 million lei in the form of VAT. It was emphasized that the approved legislative initiative is meant to ensure the observance of the principle of tax fairness between the country's settlements. // 23.10.2023 - InfoMarket
