Let’s go back for a moment to February 12, 2003. That day the National Police rioted in protest against a measure known as: The taxation.
The taxation consisted of the elimination of the fiscal credit of the salary of the workers. At that time – until now it can be done – wage earners could present invoices for an amount equal to their tax obligations, and thus maintain the purchasing power of their salary. With this they avoided transferring part of their income to the State.
Many of the protagonists of the government of that time, among them, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, are self-critical regarding that measure. Well, it resulted in a confrontation between the Police and the Military with a balance of more than a dozen dead. However, behind the police protests, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) conspired from the shadows.
In the 2002 elections, the MAS had come second. But he was not willing to wait five years of management on the opposing side. His true goal was to seize power at any cost. It was Evo Morales himself who said: “We are going to overthrow the government of the gringo (referring to President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada)”.
Obviously, their methods were going to be street terrorism and rural gangs (according to Felipe Quispe). The tax was the perfect spark for the MAS pirates to join the Police to destabilize the management of Sánchez de Lozada. It was several of the MAS militants who affirmed: «The government cannot be subjected to the neoliberals of the IMF and the World Bank. The tax hit affects the pockets of the workers. However, and despite all the verbiage against taxes, since Morales and his henchmen came to power, Bolivia has become a fiscal hell.
For example, in the 2015 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, Bolivia ranked 117th out of 132 countries analyzed. Similarly, in the Total Taxes Rate, for the year 2019, the country was among the four countries that collect the most taxes in the world.
Additionally, the National Tax Service submits taxpayers – who in many cases are parents of humble origins – to complicated books, forms, billing and all kinds of cumbersome procedures every day. Procedures that often cause involuntary errors that generate fines, interest and millionaire updates, which end up in processes, embargoes and auctions.
The MAS regime boasted quite a bit about those achievements. His joy was obvious, since they left him huge amounts of money to waste. When the size of its expenses exceeded its income – an effect that is reflected in the fiscal deficit that the country has been carrying since 2014 – I do not hesitate to increase the internal and external debt.
Now he is going, once again, in search of reaching into the pockets of citizens. This time by increasing the rate of the Specific Consumption Tax (ICE).
Before the announcement of this measure, workers and representatives of the National Chamber of Industry declared an emergency. Part of his statement reads as follows:
In unity, the industrial family calls on the national authorities to protect the industry and protect formal employment in Bolivia by annulling Bill 354/2021-2022 that threatens the sustainability of the Production of what is Made in Bolivia.
However, masista looting is not limited to the tax issue. Since in the bond issue of February this year those who “invested” the most were the AFPS, some banks and insurers. But not the big international capitals as the official propaganda says. In other words, the regime used the savings of the national private sector to compensate for the lack of confidence of international creditors in the country. With the aggravating circumstance that those resources were destined to give oxygen to an economic model sustained by irrational spending.
The Movement Towards Socialism has proven to be a monster that is plundering the current income of Bolivians and their old-age income. A leviathan with an insatiable appetite that uses the tax system to extort money from those who have the audacity to start a business in Bolivia.
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