Klodian Tomorri
Terry Pratchett, a very famous English comedian, once made a brilliant joke about Benjamin Franklin's famous quote. "He said it's taxes and death. But death doesn't happen to you every year."
People hate taxes and do everything they can to avoid them. For example, a small businessman tries to hide a sale. A larger businessman can bribe the tax inspector. Meanwhile, a prime minister has the power to waive taxes on himself.
In 2019, the Albanian government passed a law through a majority in Parliament that reduced the tax on profits of IT companies engaged in software development to 5 percent from 15 percent, which was the tax rate for everyone else. The government's argument for reducing the tax was to boost the digital sector, with the aim of turning Albania into a vanguard country in information technology.
But as Sandër Prosi had said and quoted to General Gramofoni; "how many things are done in your name, people." The real reason for the tax reduction for IT companies was the private garden of the Beqirbaxhanaks. And Albanian citizens were facing a double robbery. On the one hand, IT companies were robbing AKSHI tenders at several times the cost to the point that they were making 10 million euros of chocolates and on the other hand, they paid less tax than employees with salaries of 60 thousand lek per month.
However, the crackdown on the tax system was strongly opposed by all specialized international organizations. In 2022, the OECD classified the reduction of profit tax for IT companies in Albania as a harmful practice, classifying it as a mechanism to avoid taxes and that has no benefit for the economy or citizens.
A little later, the European Union directly threatened the Albanian government that if it did not remove the fiscal privilege for information technology companies, Albania would be officially added to the blacklist of non-cooperative countries for the fiscal regime.
It is not known whether the international community had caught wind of the fact that the IT tax privilege was actually a tax cut for private kindergartens. But their strong pressure forced the government to announce in 2024 through the fiscal package the abolition of the privilege and the reinstatement of the 15 percent tax rate for information technology companies starting from January 1, 2026.
But people hate taxes and will do anything in their power to avoid them. While announcing the removal of the tax exemption, the government secretly invented another tax loophole for IT, this time even more perverse. This was Durana.
Through a special law "On the Creation, Organization and Operation of Technological and Scientific Parks", it did not simply introduce new fiscal facilities for the IT sector, but sanctioned a pure explosion of the fiscal system. Why? Because it is not about facilities, but about total exemptions.
Consider a typical case: "Salaries of personnel working in user research and development at the park and all developer staff are exempt from all taxes."
In no European practice is a total exemption from direct personal income taxes or social contributions for employees in the Research and Development sector implemented or recommended. Governments implement incentive policies in a specific sector, through targeted fiscal relief. So there is relief, but never exemption from everything. There are fiscal incentives but not the blowing up of the fiscal system!
But once again. People hate paying taxes. Including leaders.
Editorial
