AN talks of forming grand coalition

The acting leader of Azzjoni Nazzjonali, Charles Attard yesterday said his party wanted the establishment of a grand coalition with ministers coming from all the different parties represented in Parliament.

He was replying to a question at a news conference on how AN planned to implement its electoral proposals seeing that the best it could hope for was a minor representation in Parliament.

Mr Attard said AN wanted technocrats to serve as ministers in areas where no elected MP was versed enough to handle.

If AN's proposal of a grand coalition was not accepted, it would unite with the party whose policies were closest to those in its manifesto, he said.

Presenting some of the party's ideas, he said it wanted to see company tax gradually reduced from 35 to 18 per cent. Sole traders should also pay an 18 per cent flat rate.

Ministries were full of lawyers and others who never risked their capital or borrowed money against their home, who never had to take out a loan to pay state-imposed fines or interest. Because of this, they did not appreciate what businessmen had to go through.

AN would ensure that businessmen did not pay more tax than they should. Besides gradually reducing company tax, the party would also see that businesses opting to go for a budgeting exercise would immediately start to enjoy a flat tax rate of 18 per cent. Such businesses would be immune to investigations because their operations would be continuously monitored.

Dr Attard said that businesses were being forced to forecast their profits or else go through an investigation by the Tax Compliance Unit. Businessmen should not live in fear of having an investigation going back eight years. There should be perpetual auditing and investigations should only go back two years. There were enough employees in the Finance Department to carry out regular investigative auditing of each taxpayer every two years. Resources were being wasted on files being investigated by three or more persons in each of the Value Added Tax, Tax Compliance Unit and Tax Audits departments.

AN would help restaurant owners by reducing VAT on food to five per cent, at least for as long as this was allowed by the European Union, he said.

When it came to bank loans, AN wanted to launch a scheme whereby very low interest rates would be paid in the first years. This would be raised in later years once the project for which the loan is taken out has been paid off.