| ARCHIVE | Published
Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - First news
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Basic food basket: To tax or
exempt?
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 By A.M. Costa Rica staff Drivers for the Uber company will march today starting at 7 a.m. from the Campo Ferial de Zapote to the Presidential House, also located in Zapote. The protest seeks to draw the attention of the government to a request for approval of the private transport platform in the form of a new law that legalizes the service. The Uber drivers group calls itself the August 14 Commission, as this is the date on which the company began to operate in the country in 2015. According to the organizers, the march is expected to be represented by 4,000 associates. The Ministry of Public Works and Transport began analyzing whether or not to support a law legalizing Uber last week. According to the last Uber report, more people per capita use the service in Costa Rica than in any other Latin country. George Gordon, the new regional director of the U.S. company, stated: "The case of Costa Rica also delights us a lot, not only because of the love they have for the brand, but also because it is a success story for Latin America due to the number of users and collaborating partners that use the Uber application to mobilize or as a self-employment platform. It is the Latin American country that uses the most per capita application.” According to the Uber report, there are 22,000 freelance drivers in Costa Rica. Uber started operations in Costa Rica in 2015. However, no regulation or legal structure has yet been issued to agree to its operation.
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A.M. Costa Rica wire services
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The government has been pressured by formal taxi drivers in the last few weeks. They are asking that the use of Uber in the country be formally prohibited and that the platform be deactivated so that people cannot request the service from cell phones. President Carlos Alvarado rejected the demand of taxi drivers to deactivate access to Uber last week. "There is a technical and material impossibility," for the Executive Power to satisfy the demand (referring to the deactivation of Uber). "We all understand that from a technical and material point of view that is not something that can be executed," said the president.
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AmCham
disapproves of VAT tax in free trade zones
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By A.M. Costa Rica staff Free economic zones, free economic territories or free zones are a class of special economic zones designated by the government in which companies are taxed very lightly or not at all to encourage economic activity. According to International Commerce Promoters, in the last five years, they have generated more than 93,000 direct jobs and 41 percent of these jobs directly benefit women. For every $1 of incentive, free zones contribute $3.7 to the nation’s economy and 38 percent of local purchases of multinational companies are to local companies. In 2016, this represented $1,5 billion, the promoters said. The Costa Rican-American Chamber of Commerce, kn own as AmCham, has taken the position that imposing the value-added tax in these zones would endanger local production chains and increase their costs. It has expressed its strong opposition to the tax, which is part of a new bill that calls for strengthening public finance. The government modification provides that only goods and services for export qualify for the value-added tax exemption. This would discourage the vertical integration of the economy with the companies benefiting from the free zones, highlighting the productive chains that are one of the fundamental objectives of the free zones, which have become the cornerstone of the process of attracting foreign direct investment in the country, and one of the principal economic activity in Costa Rica. According to Elías Soley, president of AmCham, it is very unfortunate that this modification was incorporated into the new text, since it generates legal uncertainty affecting those productive linkages for which the chamber continues to work intensively in Costa Rica. In addition, the initiative of the Ministry of Finance is not consistent with the desire of President Carlos Alvarado, who has repeatedly stated that this reform will not affect the free zones, due to the excellent results they has had for the country.
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Metro Free Zone courtesy photo
courtesy
photo
The tax bill initiative of the Ministry of Finance
is not consistent with the desire of President
Alvarado, who has repeatedly stated that this reform
will not affect the free zones.
Finally, AmCham said it draws
attention to the fact that this provision may be in
violation of the Agreement on Subsidies and
Countervailing Measures of the World Trade
Organization by associating the incentive with an
export criterion, Soley said.
"The establishment of a differentiated condition between export and local purchase is undoubtedly a discouragement to productive linkages. We believe it is important that there is clarity regarding the exemption of all types of purchases of goods and services of purchases, regardless of the destination of the product. In AmCham we make this alert because we believe that, if this measure is approved, the rules of the game would be changed and undermine the legal security required by companies operating in free zones, resulting in a reduction in the competitiveness of the country," Soley said. According to the Foreign Commerce Promoter Office, in Costa Rica the free trade zones have managed to connect small and medium-sized national companies with international markets, thanks to the negotiations they carry out with the companies that operate in the free zones. |
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Farmers' Chamber
opposes tax on the basic foods
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By A.M. Costa Rica
staff The representatives of the National Agricultural Alliance oppose the possible approval of a tax on the basic food basket. This new tax is still contemplated in the special commission that is analyzing the draft text of the new tax proposal known as the "Law for the Strengthening of Public Finances". The problem for farmers is that the tax exemption does not include the raw materials that farmers use to produce the basic consumer products. The farmers’ chamber said it is concerned that the approved motion does not include materials such as raw milk, citrus fruits, coffee, cocoa, sugar cane, oil palm, vegetables, meat and pork offal, poultry and beef, which are essential to produce, and/or package the goods of the basic food basket. If these products are not included in the basic basket, they would be assessed with the 13 percent sales tax, which impacts the farmers very negatively, it added.
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 A.M. Costa
Rica wire services
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The import or local purchase of wheat, corn, sorghum, soybeans, fruit and oil palm kernel, as well as the derivatives of all these raw materials for the production of animal feed, veterinary drugs and agricultural inputs is not exempt because the new tax plan considers a 1 percent tax on the purchase of these products. |
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Dental College
warns about unlicensed dentists
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By A.M. Costa Rica staff
The College of Surgeons Dentists of Costa Rica wants to alert the public that people who are not dentists have been found providing such care as: cleaning, orthodontic placement, dental and prosthesis provision, among other services. Erica Mora explained that there is a great deal of risk involved when a patient is treated by someone who is not a licensed practitioner and that such treatment can even be life threatening. The dental professional organization can confirm if a doctor is licensed, but it is the obligation of the patients to verify the license before they begin treatment, she said. "Dentistry is a science of health, in terms of the provisions of the General Law of Health and it is only the professional people in dentistry who are authorized to practice the profession," said Mora, herself a dentist. "The intervention of a non-professional person in dentistry treatments could involve serious consequences in the oral health of the patient and in the general health condition, even putting life in risk," added Mora. According to the dental organization report, several criminal complaints have been reported to the prosecutor's office in the areas of Limón, Siquirres and San José, and the offenders may be tried for the crime of illegally practicing the profession without a license. |
A.M. Costa
Rica wire services
photo
The
consultations can be made in the following link:
www.colegiodentistas.org
The dental organization has implemented a search system where people can include the name of the dentist they wish to consult and get an immediate result on the licensing status of the individual.
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Minister of Public Education prohibits discrimination against migrants in schools |
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By A.M.
Costa Rica staff |
Public
Education Ministry courtesy
photo
"If a migrant student does not have documents to prove the educational level he has or the last grade he attended, his enrollment will be defined taking into account his age, and through the application of special placement tests that contemplate the objectives and contents of the program of studies of the last year that affirms to have studied and approved," said the new regulation. |
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Police arrest
22 suspected of forging and selling driver's
licenses, passports residents ID and other
legal documents
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By A.M. Costa Rica staff The Deputy Prosecutor's Office of Frauds and the Specialized Traffic Section of the Judicial Investigating Organization made 22 raids, which allowed the capture of 22 people as suspects of forming an organization dedicated to the falsification and commercialization of licenses and other types of legal documents.The operative actions were developed in San José, Alajuelita, Tibás, Desamparados, Coronado, Pavas, Puntarenas and Cartago, as well as an office in the vicinity of the Road Safety Council (Cosevi), in La Uruca. In the raids, evidence that would link the suspects to the activity was confiscated, among which materials to falsify documents stand out along with stickers and fake documents, stamps, printers and cutting machines for metal plates, said a judicial report. According to the report the activity started in 2016, and it was led by a man with last name Laitano and a woman with the surname Ríos. The group would have falsified and sold documents such as: driver's licenses, ID and residence cards, passports, marchamos (driving tax), high school diplomas, vehicle license plates and stickers for approval of the vehicular safety review. It is believed that these were sold for high amounts of money. Then,
after payment, the
documents were delivered
near a supermarket in
Plaza González Víquez and
in other points of San
José.
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Office of
Frauds courtesy
photo
The suspects were taken to the prosecution where they had to give statements and receive precautionary measures issued by a judge. The band would also have sent the fake documents to places far away from the central canton, like in Perez Zeledón, Puntarenas and Guanacaste. |
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