It’s very simple and therefore, getting the tax receipt is today a patriotic obligation.” With this appeal, Prime Minister Edi Rama urged the cooperation of everyone, business and citizens in the large operation against informality and tax evasion that started yesterday.
“Did you get the tax receipt, Mr. Rama?”, the reporter asked the Prime Minister as he finished the morning coffee-break in one of the cafés in the former Block area in Tirana. The Prime Minister was accompanied by Tax Director Briseida Shehaj, and Communication Director Endri Fuga.
“Yes, I did.”, replied the Prime Minister
Obtaining the tax receipt, the Prime Minister appealed, is an investment that every citizen makes for him/herself, through the state budget, in the form of investments and services. In addition to defining deceitful any attempt to consider the operation against informality as an operation “against the small ones”, the Prime Minister underlined that small businesses are the end point, and obtaining the tax receipt means closing the path to evasion of large businesses, which are the large companies.
“I want very simply to explain that the effort to describe this historic operation as an operation against small businesses is an effort as ignorant as deceitful, or both things, because with the tax receipt we close the path to evasion of large businesses. Basically, if in Albania today – let’s take a very simple average – people drink 1 million coffees and water bottles per day, at a reduced average price of 100 ALL, can you figure out the amount of money that goes somewhere, instead of going to the state’s coffers and then back to citizens in the form of investments and services? It is 61 million dollars only from this. Where do this 61 million dollars go? They go somewhere and mean a big evasion, not just a small coffee evasion. On the other hand, it is also in the interest of small businesses to issue the tax receipt, because in doing so they reduce the burden they bear together with citizens because of large businesses. But, at the end we block inflow coming from the major sources of evasion, which are the large companies, the large suppliers, the ones who carry out wholesale of valuable goods, or consumer goods. It is this simple, and for this reason obtaining the tax receipt today is a patriotic duty in order to provide a direct contribution to our public finances to be strengthened at a point that is unimaginable for us today. In addition, it will give us the possibility to invest more in schools, kindergartens, day nurseries and infrastructure, improve the quality of services, lower taxes and increase salaries for everybody.”
The Prime Minister assured that the National Registration Center is serving businesses with long hours, and highlighted that failure of registering businesses means unfair competition to fair business.
“The NRC is working overtime, but had businesses been registered earlier, it would have been better. Because it is not fair that a family who has invested in this coffee shop here that issues tax receipts, pays along with the employees of this small business, or even of a large business, also on behalf of someone else who benefits by distorting competition and preventing the owners of this coffee shop from benefiting from tax breaks and salary increase, and thus increase employment.”
