The Trade Union of Indirect Taxation Authority (ITA) of BiH has organized a warning strike, which began on Monday and will last every day from 12:00 to 14:00, until the basic conditions required by ITA employees are met.
The decision to start the strike was made after all legally prescribed possibilities were exhausted and after the BiH Council of Ministers did not find understanding to try to correct the extremely bad position of ITA employees, the ITA Employees’ Union said.
“This institution is crucial for the fiscal stability of all levels of government in BiH, so with 85 percent, all budgets in BiH (state, entity, cantonal and municipal) are financed by indirect taxes. Although the ITA collects an increasing amount of revenues from indirect taxes from year to year, the same amount of funds is allocated every year (680 million BAM annually for all state institutions) to finance BiH institutions, including ITA employees. All surplus income ends up in the entity coffers every year, the statement said.
This, as it is further stated, has led to an absurd situation, so that the inspector in the Tax Sector in the ITA – expert associate, has a basic salary of 998 BAM, and inspectors at lower levels of government have salaries of 1,500 each year due to revenue growth BAM and more.
“The last straw” is the latest announcement that salaries will be increased at the entity level by an additional ten percent, all at the expense of increased revenues from indirect taxes.
The ITA Trade Union reminds that in the three months of 2022, revenues from indirect taxes amounted to two billion and 229 million BAM, and that they were higher by 406 million or 22.29 percent compared to the revenues collected by the ITA in the same period in 2021.
“All the surplus of collected revenues ended up with the entities and the Brcko District. Employees in the ITA have nothing against increasing salaries at lower levels of government, but they no longer want to suffer the ‘stepmotherly’ attitude of everyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina towards employees in the Indirect Taxation Authority,” it is stated, among other things, in the statement.
