Covid-19, Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Taxation

This means that the idea to task social services with assessing self-employed persons' income and necessity to make the mandatory social security contributions has been scrapped. "So, the self-employed will not have to go to the social service," the minister said.

In Petravica's words, the coalition is thus making an exception for the self-employed. 

As reported, the Social Workers Association of Latvia sent several public officials an open letter urging against turning social workers into tax inspectors and demanding Petravica's resignation.

The association objects to the plan proposed by the Ministries of Finance and Welfare to oblige municipal social workers to assess the income levels of self-employed persons or persons paying the microenterprise tax to determine if their income is low enough to exempt them from paying the mandatory social tax.