Today i want to share with you, what is happening at the moment with the tax reform, what is and what involves, the factors or posible consequences that may happen, so in order to start is good to know that the Dominican Republic suffers from government corruption, wasteful spending, and high unemployment, as well as unreliable electric service caused by seasonal drought, low collection rates, theft, and infrastructure problems. Today im going to focus in the first two: government corruption and wasteful spending.
The Dominican government is a machine of dispensing favors and political patronage to supporters. For example, the departing administration of president Leonel Fernández has 334 vice ministers distributed among 20 cabinet ministries. The Ministry of Agriculture has 37 vice ministers, Public Health has 34. Each vice minister enjoys a nice salary plus benefits such as a discretionary credit card, travel expenses, car with a chauffeur, staff, etc. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/ And because of those thing, President Danilo Medina signed into law a bill that's expected to raise government revenue up to 2% of GDP, in an attempt to tackle a budget deficit that this year will amount to nearly 8% of GDP. www.cnn.com And now we are reacting to measures that look to increase national sales tax from 16% to 18% in most products; and sets a special sales tax to previously exempt products like certain foods and services that will range from 6% to 10%. Amongst other tax increases. www.cnn.com The budget deficit projected for 2012 was scheduled to end at nearly 2% of GDP this year, but as admitted by the authorities, a spending surge during the previous government of Leonel Fernandez, who is in the same party as current President Medina, during the run up to elections, skyrocketed the deficit to nearly 4 times that initial projection. www.cnn.com So in fact of those wasteful spending