After more than four hours of debate, the legislators concluded the work of the bill of Domain Extinction excluding from the project tax avoidance.
The president of the bicameral commissionsenator Pedro Catrain, said that the report will be presented as soon as the technicians conclude the writing of the project.
Regarding the discussion of whether it is an ordinary or organic law, Catrain said that they do not decide on that, but that it is the power of the legislative chambers.
“We conclude today, the bicameral commission, the Domain Extinction Law has been approved by a majority of the members of that bicameral commission”, Catrain said as he left the Senate.
“In no way do we include retroactivity, the only thing we included was retrospectiveness and we put a previous term of 20 years backwards, so that is a criterion of the laws of domain extinction in most of the countries where it has been approved”, explained the legislator.
On the exclusion of tax avoidance He said that in the commission they established that any type of tax offense can be subject to this law, “therefore there is no need to establish the tax avoidance which is not typified in any criminal or tax legislation in the Dominican Republic.”
PLD withdrew from the meeting
Precisely because of the exclusion of the tax avoidancewhich had already been previously approved in the commission, the members of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) who are part of the bicameral commission they withdrew
Aris Yván Lorenzo, spokesman for the senators of the PLD, said that it was a matter of disrespect because that point had already been agreed upon and approved in the commission.
PRSC Proposal
The bicameral commission welcomed the proposal presented by the senator for the Christian Social Reformist Party (PRSC), Ramón Rogelio Genao, who suggested, through a document addressed to the president of the commission, the elimination of the tax avoidance and retroactivity.
Genao brought a document that was delivered to Catrain, where he also proposes that the law be organic, and not an ordinary law, understanding that together with retroactivity, if it is approved as an ordinary law it might be constitutionally attacked.
“The non-retroactivity and retrospectiveness that might be included in the law, can hardly successfully overcome a constitutionality test before the Constitutional Court”, the document says.
“We warn that tax evasion is not a previous or precedent offense in Law 155-17,” added Genao.
Request minutes and audios of the Commission
Lorenzo, along with other legislators, reiterated that the president of the Senate has seized the audios and minutes of the commission’s meetings. Lorenzo, who asked the representatives of the media to go down with him to the Committee Room, said that on instructions from the president of the Senate, Eduardo Estrella, they have not given him those minutes and that “they intend to change everything that the committee has passed”.
According to Lorenzo, the PRM wants to ignore the work of weeks of legislators removing things already agreed upon and approved in the commission. He recalled that for several weeks they had requested the delivery of the minutes and recordings and that by order of the president of the Senate they have not been delivered.
