In an interview for FENA Agency, Arifovic denied repeated statements regarding the high tax rates and other “burdens“ for employers, as an obstacle and a burden for local employers and foreign investors in FBiH.
First of all, he says, it must be clarified and the clear division must be made at the taxes and social security contributions, and other fees, taxes, memberships and other para-fiscal burdens.
Talking about taxes in the country, he emphasizes that BiH, therefore the FBiH as well, with the low tax rates of VAT (17%), income tax (10%) and personal income tax, is the country with the lowest tax rates in the region and Europe.
“That is very attractive for foreign investors, especially if we add that owners of companies- natural persons when raising dividends are completely exempted from paying taxes on dividends, and the payment of dividends to legal entities and nonresidential companies is taxed at the preferential rate of 5%“, emphasizes Arifovic.
For these reasons, the competent institutions for attracting the foreign investors such as the Agency for the promotion of foreign investments, Foreign Trade Chamber BiH and entities’ trade chamber, should talk a lot more about the positive segments of tax policy and their appearances outside BiH and work on attracting foreign investors in public.
“The average income tax rate in Europe is 30%, which is significantly higher than in FBiH and RS, and when it comes to the taxation of income in FBiH, we have a unique rate of 10% with significant reliefs for employees who are liable for this tax, and not employers“, said Arifovic.
Despite the economic crisis, FBiH Tax Authority in 2014 achieved a significant increase in public revenues, i.e direct taxes and contributions in the amount of 3.795.241.319 BAM, which is for 189 million BAM or 5.24% more than the billing realized in 2013.
(Spurce: klix.ba/ photo radiosarajevo)
I must say I find this article somewhat strange!
When my Company was looking at doing Business in BiH we looked at the Tax situation and were told by many people words to the effect of “Don’t worry about that nobody pays Tax here”
From further investigation this is obviously true.
When we looked further we found the Bureaucracy in BiH made it virtually impossible to start up a Business there in any case so we gave up and looked to Poland.