Students will be able to earn up to 60,600 kuna a year without paying taxes.
Croatian Student Council held a meeting on Friday with Finance Minister Zdravko Marić and Science and Education Minister Pavo Barišić. They discussed the new tax system for income of university students. After the meeting, Minister Marić said he was pleased with the results, reports N1 on January 13, 2017.
“We held a constructive meeting and I have to commend the representatives of university students. The main conclusion is that we have come to an agreement about a non-taxable amount of 60,600 kuna on an annual basis, rather than 5,050 kuna per month, which was our initial provision. We have taken into consideration the fact that many high school and university students work intermittently, and therefore it is difficult to calculate their monthly income. Our plan was to adopt the new regulations within 90 days, but we will speed up the process and adopt it by the end of January”, said Marić, who also announced the establishment of yet another new body at the government level which will deal with the problems of students.
“We have agreed that we will form the body because it is evident that we have discussed here just the taxation aspects of the student work, and that is a topic which is largely inadequately regulated. We will recommend to the government to form the body, in order to have just one law which will regulate all aspects of student work”, said Marić.
Asked whether he was now correcting his previous error with regards to taxation of student income, Marić said there was no error, but there were difficulties in communicating, adding that he was convinced that “today there have been improvements”. He also stressed the problem of the regulations itself, which date back to 1996, with minor changes adopted in 2008.
Students recently revolted due to new rules on the taxation on their earnings. They have launched an online petition and announced they would hold large protests against the changes with entered into force on 1 January, together with the rest of the tax reform.
