site.btaUPDATED Social Partners Divided over Cabinet-Proposed Poverty Line for 2024

Employers backed a Government-proposed monthly poverty line of BGN 526, while trade unions opposed the proposal at a meeting of the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation (NCTC) here on Wednesday.

The amount is by BGN 22 or 4.4% up from 2023, Deputy Labour and Social Policy Minister Ginka Mashova said. She explained that the increase will entail larger social allowances under the Social Assistance Act, larger financial support under the Persons with Disabilities Act, and larger financial support for prevention, reintegration and placing children with relatives and extended family and in foster care under the Child Protection Act. The coverage of social-old age pension recipients will be broadened, too.

More than 672,000 permanently disabled adults are to receive financial support under the Persons with Disabilities Act in 2024, and 123,508 people will be aided under the Social Assistance Act, Mashova pointed out.

The Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association expressed support in principle to the poverty line for 2024. The Bulgarian Industrial Association, the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria and the Union for Private Economic Enterprise also backed the proposal.

"We do not support the draft decree the way it is proposed," Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) Vice President and Chief Economist Lyuboslav Kostov said. He argued for the need to streamline the method by which the poverty line is set by reincluding the small basket of consumer goods, defining the minimum needs guaranteeing a specified minimum social income per household member.

Podkrepa Confederation of Labour Chief Economist Atanas Katsarchev pointed out that his Confederation in principle supports an increase of the poverty line but proposes several changes, including the method by which the line is set. In his words, the idea is to come up with an amount applicable to the largest possible number of people and households who live below the subsistence level.

Emerging from the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Mariya Gabriel, who chairs the NCTP, told a news briefing that the social partners with the exception of CITUB had backed in principle a draft Council of Ministers decree setting the amount of the national poverty line for 2024. The Tripartite Council supported Government-proposed bills amending and supplementing the Local Taxes and Fees Act and the Excise Duties and Tax Warehouses Act, Gabriel told the media.

The rest of the tax legislation package discussed at the meeting got partial support from the social partners, the Deputy PM reported. She specified that the bills in question revise the Value Added Tax Act, the Income Taxes on Natural Persons Act, the Corporate Income Tax Act and the Tax and Social-Insurance Procedure Code.

In Gabriel's words, a number of proposals were made at the meeting, and they will be considered by the Ministry of Finance.

Finance Minister Assen Vassilev told the news briefing that, on the whole, the core measures intended to increase tax compliance had been backed. He added that some of these measures "are subject to streamlining" so as to avoid "extra burden on business in the process of declaration submission."