28 March 2024, Thursday, 15:29
Support
the website
Sim Sim,
Charter 97!
Categories

What Other Fees Do Authorities Want to Impose on Drivers?

64
What Other Fees Do Authorities Want to Impose on Drivers?

The Ministry of Transport is going to "improve" the toll thorough.

Officials think over again how to raise the toll thorough correctly.

In the end of February the head of Minskobldorstroj Dzyanis Stsyapanau has offered to review the transport tax collection system and include it in the fuel price. He explained it with fact that this scheme was more reasonable - "the more person drives, the more he pays."

Later the first Deputy Minister of Transport Aliaksei Auramenka told about it on Belarus 1 TV channel. The official noted that "the current mechanism is subject to improvement, but it is not about inclusion of the toll thorough in the fuel price."

Will Belarusian drivers have to open their wallets wide again?

Sukhau: Transport tax rates will rise

Representative of the For Auto Association Fyodar Sukhau believes that it is barely possible to somehow improve the existing model.

- They will not include the tax in the fuel price; it has an excise tax there. In this case, the price of fuel will have two taxes for road needs, expert says in comments to Zautra Tvaye Krainy.

Nevertheless, he is convinced that officials will raise the tax rate, because the budget bursts at the seams".

- Words on improvement is just the reason to shuffle. We have BelToll, and if we use the money it brings, one can cover the entire country with first-class roads, Fyodar Sukhau believes.

The interlocutor remarks that since 2013 the condition of roads has significantly worsened.

- It is enough to drive 100 kilometers away from Minsk and turn off the road and you will see the real situation with roads. I know several settlements, which have had an asphalt pavement since the Soviet times, now it is impossible to drive there and people move on the sides, the representative of the For Auto Association stresses.

Kavalkin: It's more profitable to pay penalty than the tax

According to the head of the Kosht Urada project Vadzim Kavalkin, the Belarusian authorities can use tech innovations to raise the collection of the tax.

- They can install, for example, automatic recorders to scan numbers to recognize vehicles that have not passed the MOT Test and later fine them, expert says.

Moreover, officials can increase fines to stimulate people pay the tax, rather than fine.

- Today it is more profitable to pay fine than the tax, that is why 30% do not pass the MOT Test, because they do not see any sense in it, the economist notes.

Since 2007 (the time the tax on oil sales was repealed) the Belarusian authorities have decided to replace it with the excise tax.

- First excise went to the budget and later was spent on roads. Nevertheless, later this money has started to cover other needs. That is, people are simply cheated, Uladzimir Kavalkin explains. - Later the hole in the budget has emerged that caused the necessity to introduce a fee for permit to driving. But this is not the end of the story. If the President personally said that the fee would be spent on road construction and capital repairs, now money are spent on maintenance process. That is, funds begin to be wasted on inappropriate needs.

Such approach does not make a quality of roads possible, the interlocutor sums up.

Write your comment 64

Follow Charter97.org social media accounts