Macedonian Businessmen Pay 6 Times Lower Taxes than EU Businessmen

Macedonia ranks 7th worldwide in "Paying taxes 2015" report. This is a confirmation that conditions and entire procedure of paying taxes are significantly favourable for the companies i.e. the most favourable in the region of the South East Europe and among the best in Europe and the world, Deputy PM and Finance Minister Zoran Stavreski stated Friday.
Answering a journalist question Stavreski said that it is quite a success to be ranked 7th out of 189 countries worldwide in the report prepared by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, in cooperation with the World Bank.

Macedonia is the first in the world, the best according to tax rates, i.e. with a rate of 7.4% making it one of the better in the world for time needed to pay taxes and companies’ costs in this regard, This means that 119 hours are needed for completing the payments of taxes in Macedonia while in other countries in the region this is significantly higher and by six to seven times the rate is lower than EU's average. In this way conditions for companies to spend less in paying taxes and reinvestments are created, Stavreski said.
The seventh place according to Stavreski is yet another confirmation for the great business climate in Macedonia.


A further confirmation of sorts came from the Telegraph, which published a story on United Kingdom's decline on the PwC list, titled: "Macedonia and Kiribati have better tax systems than the UK".

- A triple burden of red tape, compliance costs and the slow pace of tax reform is hampering efforts to transform Britain into the most competitive country in the G20, according to a new report. While the Government's decision to slash corporation tax to 20pc in 2015 from 28pc in 2010 meant hundreds of multinational companies were now flocking to the UK, increased efforts by other countries to step up reforms and Britain's relatively complex system pushed it down two places to 16th in the World Bank and PwC's annual benchmark of business tax systems. The decline means the UK is behind Macedonia and pacific island Kiribati in terms of overall tax competitiveness and just one place above Kazakhstan, the Telegraph observes.