HAK-İŞ Confederation Chairman Mahmut Arslan stated that among Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, Turkey is one of the countries that receives the most insurance premiums and tax cuts from employees. Arslan said: “In other words, 40 percent of the income of wage earners goes to income tax, insurance premium, unemployment benefit and similar deductions. For this, our request is to discuss the tax issue with a radical reform perspective and to take important steps in this regard. All economists around the world say that tax revenues cannot be increased by raising tax brackets. This benefits off the record. There is more than 30 percent unregistered employment in our country. Informal employment means unregistered tax, informal insurance. The higher the tax bracket, the higher the number of people who go unregistered. Then the state should reduce tax brackets and increase tax revenues by taking taxes from everyone. At a time when the economic crisis is at its peak and inflation exceeds 80 percent, a limit should be set on tax brackets. Until economic crisis ends, until inflation reaches a certain point, let's limit all employee tax brackets to 10 percent. Let's do this work until the crisis is over. Let's put forward that tax losses and informal economy are higher in countries like Turkey, where the tax burden on wage earners is at the top. Let's also put the models in developed countries in this regard. Let's solve this problem together.”
LOW-INCOME FAMILIES CAN NOT LIVE ON WHEN THE TAX LOAD IS ADDED TO THEIR BACK
Emphasizing that they gave a briefing on taxation to Lütfi Elvan, the former Minister of Treasury and Finance, and conveyed their demands on this matter, “The Minister carefully examined the report we prepared on taxation and unfortunately transferred it to the Revenue Administration. This was unfortunate for us. There were discussions again and it failed. When our new Minister of Treasury and Finance gives an appointment, we will ask the Minister to take a step by expanding this report and explaining that we are going through an extraordinary period. When the tax burden is added to the backs of our low-income people, who are barely making a living, our friends can not live on,” Arslan added.