The tax on special constructions will be destructive for many investments in many economic sectors, not just in energy, the general director of the Energy Employers' Federation (FPE) Daniel Apostol cautioned on Tuesday.
"Think about farmers, think about telecom, think about energy, about everything renewables - whether you build a wind turbine, a photovoltaic park, or you just place a transformer somewhere, they are all considered a special construction.
This tax is far from benefiting the state. We are working on certain calculations to demonstrate that not even the public budget has anything to gain, in the medium term, from the application of such a tax," Apostol said at the presentation of a Deloitte Consultanta SRL report commissioned by FPE.
According to the report, an investment of one billion euros in onshore oil and gas exploration and production would generate over the next 10 years or so a GDP increase of 5.8 billion euros, approximately 43,500 jobs maintained and/or newly created, and a 3.1 billion euro increase in state budget revenues from taxes and fees.
"If we were to apply the special constructions tax to the value of 1 billion euros, what does 1% mean? (...) A considerable amount the one who undertakes the investment should have to pay. Who would then still venture into such an investment? There are perhaps companies with financial power that would still undertake such an investment with the hyper-fiscalization risk included, yet other companies won't be able to cope and will give up on the investment. What is happening with the special constructions tax now? We are in permanent contact with the Finance Ministry.
We have sent letters of position where we argued why we consider this tax to be useless, incorrectly set out, we still do not know if it will be 1% of the initial accounting value of the investment - which would be disastrous - or if the depreciation over time will be also taken into account. We don't know yet, the regulations are still in the works.
We have not very formal signals that 'they are being worked on' means that the most rational solutions are being sought. For now, we are facing this situation, there is an emergency ordinance that provides for a new tax that will be destructive for many investments, in many economic sectors, and I am not speaking only on behalf of energy producers," mentioned Daniel Apostol.
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