They emphasized that, in parallel with improving the position of workers, it is necessary to urgently reduce labor costs, i.e. relieving the burden on employers, which would result in an increase in the competitiveness of the goods and services they provide on the domestic and foreign markets. In order to protect investments, it is necessary for the Government to act in accordance with the principles of legal certainty, economic predictability and legitimate expectations, as key elements for creating a business environment that encourages investments and economic development.
They believe that it is necessary to act without delay through urgent and systemic measures:
A. Emergency measures – reduction of salary burden:
a) determining the part of the salary that is not subject to income tax and that is not subject to contributions;
b) amendments to the Law on Contributions in the part related to employer and employee contribution rates, in such a way that employer contributions are reduced from 10.5% to 5.5% and employee contributions are reduced from 31% to 26%.
B. Systemic measures – long-term fiscal plan and fiscal reform:
The only sustainable solution is a comprehensive systemic reform of the fiscal system, which should be carried out as soon as possible, i.e. by urgent procedure. The implementation of the reform should be preceded by the adoption of a three-year Fiscal Plan with measures that will ensure a positive trend in the annual GDP. The fiscal plan would be the basis for defining the fiscal reform strategy.
a) adopt the Law on Fiscalization of Transactions in FBiH, which the Government of FBiH submitted in draft form for public discussion in December 2024. The law should significantly reduce the “gray economy”, because it will enable, in addition to the hardware fiscalization that is currently in use, software (online) fiscalization that is necessary in order to follow trends and changes in the market (online shops, internet sales, distance sales, etc.), in real time and thus additionally prevented the manipulation of transactions originally registered through fiscal cash registers.
b) the aforementioned increase in public revenues creates the prerequisites for the abolition of the contribution “NA” to the gross salary at the expense of the employer at the current rate of 10.5% and possibly further reduction of the contribution “IZ” salary. These changes need to be reflected through changes to the Law on Contributions of the FBiH. In the described manner, the economy should be relieved with the aim of influencing the competitiveness of products on the domestic and foreign markets.
c) an increase in public revenues can be provided by changing the tax treatment of other types of income and benefits through the amendment of the FBiH Income Tax Law by introducing a differential tax rate or expanding the tax base.
(Vijesti.ba)
