Before the adoption of the Law abolishing the payment of tax on donated food, vijesti.ba warned that such a solution could open up space for higher earnings on the black market.
Whether the black market flourished after the adoption of the Law has yet to be determined by the competent institutions. What is known is the fact that the end users of donated food do not see the effects of this Law.
“Since VAT on donated food was abolished, our kitchen has not received a single gram, nothing,” said the Public Kitchen in Sarajevo’s Old Town.
The association Pomozi.ba cites an example where a company expressed its wish to donate 77 pallets of juice, three days before the deadline. Short deadlines for delivery, transport and storage create a problem.
“What happens when the goods expire in five days, we get them today and we don’t work over the weekend? We live in local communities that have public kitchens where the electricity goes out, then it happens that the goods cannot be distributed to the end users on the fifth day. Then we, as organizations that help users of public kitchens, find ourselves in a situation where we have to pay VAT for the destruction of such food, says Rajko Lazić from the Red Cross in the RS.
We warned about this fact before the adoption of the law. But populist politics tried to make themselves heard differently. Namely, VAT was previously paid on wasted food. Now those who want to avoid the cost of paying VAT on wasted food are in a privileged position.
Practically, they can wait until the last moment for an opportunity to sell, and then, when it is certain that they will not sell it, donate it.
Also, throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, including its capital, there are well-known places where wholesale and retail trade is carried out, and where the basic method of payment is cash. Such a solution additionally favored that type of food trade and created space for the enrichment of those who are ready to engage in fraud, but also unfair competition to those who adhere to the procedures and laws of this country in their business.
As they wrote before, the job of the state is to direct part of the collected tax through the design of social programs to those who need food. The Ministry of Labor and Social Policy should, first of all, if they don’t already have one, have records of end users, i.e. those in a state of need, and plan allocations for this purpose in their annual budgets.
In this way, the end users of this form of state support would be known exactly.
Until these areas are systemically and fundamentally regulated, Laws like this one will bring some political points to the proponents, but in the long run will have harmful consequences for the state, Istraga.ba writes.
