Albania mulls new measures to benefit businesses

The Albanian Ministry of Finance has revealed a new bill containing a package of measures designed to relieve burdens of businesses, Albanian Top Channel reported on Monday.

The main new measures include automatic reimbursement of value-added tax (VAT) for more enterprises, less penalties, and the use of electronic bills, it said.

Currently, the government makes automatic VAT reimbursement only for companies that export all of their products. But the new draft law will expand the benefit to about 40 percent of all the enterprises in the country.

Meanwhile, under the new bill awaiting the parliament's approval, the Albanian government has softened penalties for some tax violations, including the removal of the fine of 500,000 Leks (4,065 U.S. dollars) for family businesses which fail to declare unpaid employees.

The bill also mitigates penalties for failure to declare and pay taxes on time and failure to make proper tax declarations.

For businesses that have difficulty in paying taxes, the government will allow them to pay in installments.

(APD)