The Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan held expanded session on December 9. It was devoted to discussion of forecasts of main macroeconomic figures, the concept of tax and budget policy and Draft State budget of the Republic of Uzbekistan to 2018.
The participants of the session considered the main directions of fiscal policy for 2018, that provides for a further reduction in the tax burden, reducing the number of taxes and mandatory payments, strengthening the revenue base of local budgets and increasing their autonomy, rational use of resources and ensuring the completeness of revenues, in particular at the expense of:
- unification of income tax and tax on improvement and development of social infrastructure, with a reduction in the aggregate of the base rate from 15.5 percent to 14.5 percent;
- unification of compulsory contributions to the Pension Fund, Republican Road Fund, Fund for development of material-technical base of educational and medical institutions into single payment – mandatory contributions to the state trust funds, with a simultaneous decrease in the total rate from 3.5 percent to 3.2 percent, which would allow economic entities to save some 411 billion soums;
- reducing the tax burden on the income of individuals at the expense of increasing the size of contributions to individual accumulative accounts from 1 percent to 2 percent, which would allow to increase savings by more than 450 billion soums;
- reducing the rate of fixed tax for individual entrepreneurs, on average by 30 percent, this aims at improving the entrepreneurial activity of the population;
- granting rights to local authorities, taking into account regional peculiarities and the place of business, to enter lowering and raising factors from 0.7 to 1.3 of established basic rates for the tax on property of physical persons, land tax and fixed tax.
