Financial Services, Investments, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Taxation

The foreign investors also recommend expanding the existing simplified tax regime to include also taxpayers like au pairs, hairdressers, photographers, cleaners, designers and others. 

FICIL notes that presently many small services providers are operating in the grey zone without paying personal income tax and social security contributions for their part-time jobs that they are doing in addition to their main jobs. 

The investors recommend charging a low, 10% tax on such small jobs without deducting operating expenses. Clients would pay for these services in a bank account and the total amount of payments subject to this tax could not exceed EUR 40,000 a year. 

FICIL also proposes revising the size of nontaxable minimum income and its application. The investors' believe that it is necessary either to set a fixed nontaxable minimum income or to simplify the calculation of salaries, abolishing nontaxable minimum and introducing several stages of progressivity. 

The investors also propose simplifying the calculation of personal income tax, social contributions and solidarity tax, which in their opinion should be combined with personal income tax. The nontaxable minimum income should be unchangeable regardless of the size of annual income, according to FICIL.