Cyprus: Politicians Mull Delay To Tax Reforms

Lorys Charambolous, Tax-news.com, Nicosia

18 January 2001

Last week Tax-news.com reported that the Cyprus government's proposed tax reforms were submitted to Parliament but with no definite date on which they would be discussed. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that the tax reforms debate will not take place until after the May parliamentary elections.

The Cyprus media yesterday carried the different views of all the political parties, which had their own reasons for welcoming the delay.

Deputy Chairman of Demokratikos Synagermos (DISY), Panagiotis Demetriou, said: 'If it were possible to discuss the Finance Minister's tax reforms proposal, it would be better [however] this is not up to the Finance Minister or any single political party. We will need the general consensus of all political parties to discuss this matter without being influenced by the inevitable pre-election fever.'

The timing, added Mr Demetriou, would be a mistake if the debate was carried out before the elections as political parties are vulnerable to pre-election pressures: 'We don't think that any of the parties could remain uninfluenced by the climate in a way that ensures that this grave issue is discussed objectively and without any party-political motivation. In any case, we believe that the debate should start and that we should see how we get on and whether the debate will be free of all pre-election interests,' he said.

The view of the AKEL party is that there is little point in debating the reforms now because it leaves little time for Parliament to complete a full discussion of every aspect before the elections kick in. Party member Kikis Kazamias said: 'It seems that the content of the proposal is multi-faceted. It concerns ideas and views and not simply legal proposals that need to be examined and approved. Given the priorities and the bulk of the work that the House Finance Committee still needs to discuss, it would be difficult to complete such a debate before the Committee interrupts its work.'

He continued: 'With the Committee scheduled to stop its work at the end of March, as parliament will close prior to the election campaign, it would not be very nice if one parliament ended up debating the issue and a different parliament was called upon to approve it. Either the current parliament, which dissolves at the end of March, should complete the examination and vote for the proposal or this should be left to the new parliament. It seems that the second choice is more realistic. But there are no strong views on the issue. That is to say we have not reached a political decision to avoid discussing the issue.'

DIKO deputy chairman Nikos Kleanthous also viewed the timing as his party's first concern saying, 'it is a matter of time, i.e. whether this huge and grave issue can be debated and rounded up before the parliamentary elections in a way that serves public interest. This is what we are wondering. The party has not discussed the matter officially. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if we could start discussing the tax reforms and played it by ear.'

At least the parties are in agreement about something!

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