COMPANIES doing business in sectors that are subject to regulation will pay a special levy of 0.363 percent of their profits as of September after President Ivan Gašparovič signed legislation to this effect. The new duty will affect not only companies with Slovak capital, but also organisational units of foreign firms which are set up in Slovakia and operate in the same business, the TASR newswire reported.
The extra levy will concern companies which earn at least 50 percent of their profits in a regulated area, and whose annual profits exceed €3 million. One of the conditions is that the firm must be active in at least one of ten regulated spheres based on a special permit released by the European Union and the European Economic Area, like energy, insurance, public-health insurance, electronic communications, postal services and transport.
The Finance Ministry expects the measure will bring an extra €25.7 million into state coffers this year, and €77 million in 2013, as companies will be able to put the levy down as a tax expenditure, thereby reducing the actual amount of collected income taxes, TASR wrote.
Meanwhile, the Pravda daily reported that the European Commission might check if the new legislation is in compliance with European law, citing a source within the EC. However, the commission’s representative office in Slovakia did not confirm the report, saying only that the law was passed recently and that the commission did not yet know all the details.
