Marić: The final decision will be made in the autumn.
Croatian Finance Minister Zdravko Marić commented on the issue of property tax, its announced postponement and possible implementation date, reports N1 on August 30, 2017.
Asked whether the final date when the implementation of the property tax will start had been decided, Marić said that things have not changed. “We are working on the preparations on how to best organise this round of activities. There will be multiple rounds of public presentations, in order to explain what we wanted to do by introducing the property tax, so that people can see what I was talking about and that calculations of the tax could be better explained, and some other issues,” said Marić.
“Citizens are already familiar with this because they receive bills for communal fees each month, and we know how it is calculated,” he added.
Given that the current law states that the implementation of the property tax would start from 1 January 2018, the Finance Minister said that, if there is indeed a delay, the law should be formally amended.
“I will not prejudge anything at this time. We will prepare a few rounds of meetings for the autumn, confront the arguments, put everything on the table and present the issues, and based on that a clear decision will be made,” Marić said.
“After a series of presentations that will happen, if there is a delay, then the law has to be changed. That is just hypothetical, let us go step by step,” Marić told journalists.
Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced several weeks ago that the implementation of the property tax, which was supposed to start in January, would be delayed until a later date, without providing details. The introduction of the new tax had drawn criticism against the government.
However, since the Prime Minister’s announcement of a delay in a media interview, no clear statements from the government have been given on if and when exactly the tax would be introduced, which has caused concern, together with Finance Minister’s statements like this, that the government will change its mind again. Since the legislation on the property tax was already passed by the Parliament late last year, if the government does not do anything, the tax will come into effect in January.
