ضريبة استثنائية أقرّها مجلس النواب اللبناني ضمن موازنة العام 2024
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 10% of the tax imposed by the Parliament in the year 2024 was imposed on companies that
00:07 benefited from the support of the Central Bank for basic sectors such as medicine, flour,
00:14 food and fuel.
00:15 In opposition to the decision, companies announced the temporary suspension of oil importation
00:20 from import and delivery of oil, which led to the citizens' panic at the fuel stations
00:26 and gas sales, fearing that they would be cut off in a scene that the Lebanese people
00:31 have tasted in Marara during 2021.
00:34 However, things have returned to normal and it has been decided that the tax will be imposed
00:38 on exceptional profits, not on the total profits.
00:41 This agenda is being discussed and people still do not know anything about it.
00:45 The danger of this tax is that it has a return effect.
00:49 The principle of non-return of the laws is a principle that we have been determining
00:53 for hundreds of years, not now.
00:55 All these two points make it possible to have a kind of lack of confidence in the legislative
01:00 power in Lebanon.
01:01 We will also have a shortage of investors.
01:04 If we came to this country today, we might have made profits.
01:07 After a while, we will have taxes on the profits we made.
01:11 We did not calculate the account.
01:13 Of course, this is regardless of the fact that the merchants who were working on supported
01:19 materials and did not steal, they did not benefit a penny to get profits.
01:23 And those who made profits illegally, they should not be held accountable by the tax,
01:28 but by other means.
01:29 Experts say that the government sees in this tax, which is imposed by a return effect,
01:34 commercial works that benefited from supported dollars.
01:37 It recovered part of the money by exploiting support through heavy profits, which were
01:42 generated by companies, sectors, the wave of monopolies, storage, smuggling, and the
01:46 deprivation of citizens from it.
01:48 The state is responsible for the taxes.
01:50 And this 10% tax, in the opinion of the moderate, should be 15% or 20% but in time.
01:55 Today, there is a benefit from the money that is being raised, of course.
01:59 The profits of oil companies, of course.
02:01 They should have made less profit, of course.
02:03 I am all for it.
02:04 But who has the right to do it in time?
02:06 There is data that is very important, and I as a citizen and an economist want to know
02:10 it.
02:11 But if we know it correctly, the data is opened from 17-20 to today, these 7, 10, or
02:15 20 billion, which are talked about in numbers, it needs a click of a button.
02:19 But it needs a real will, which we have not seen, a real intention, which we have not
02:24 seen, and a political cover.
02:26 There are no exact numbers on what these wills will bring to the state's treasury.
02:30 But experts say that the approximate loss of the real estate that the Lebanese bank
02:36 owned could be determined.
02:38 At the beginning of the crisis in 2019, the real estate was worth about 32 billion dollars.
02:43 Today, it is worth about 9 billion dollars.
02:46 The difference reached about 21 billion dollars.
02:49 It was converted from 8 to 9 billion dollars.
02:52 The difference in the price of the real estate and the black market was lost by a value of
02:56 2 billion dollars.
02:57 About 10 billion dollars was spent on supporting consumer goods.
03:02 The demand today is to convert the companies' assets that benefited from the real estate
03:07 platform to financial investment, which will be determined if these companies have made
03:12 profits or lost these assets abroad, or if they sold the goods at the supported price
03:18 and not at the black market price, to justify the companies that work under the law and
03:24 that the outside world has taken into account for the sake of the state's treasury.
03:28 Elena Mrad, CNBC Arabia, Beirut.