Santiago will charge RD$400 for publicity on vehicles

SANTO DOMINGO. The Santiago city government is going to try and collect RD$400 for moving publicity, and this had produced a complaint from the Dominican Association of Telecommunications (Adomtel) that says that they feel that the measure represents a threat and is retaliation against the sector.

The collection of taxes for publicity on the vehicles of the telephone companies is contained in Resolution 2719-05 of the Municipal Council of Santiago, written 4 years ago, but now is the first time that the telecommunications companies are receiving their first bills.

In the same resolution, in Chapter 8, the city refers to licenses, procedures for requesting, deadlines, conditions and installation of outside publicity, and in Article 32, paragraph C, it is established that moving publicity on automobiles, buses, pickup trucks, trucks or any other way will pay RD$400 per square meter or fraction thereof each year.

To this resolution Adomtel said they were worried by the attitude taken by some mayors against the operations of the sector.

The executive director of the association, Yoneidi Castillo, complained that the Santiago City Council was looking to collect on moving publicity from the telephone companies in retaliation as the first step towards other campaigns.

He considered that this represents a threat to any productive sector.

He put as an example the case of moving publicity of a telephone company, with 30 small vans or pickups with a sign that was 0.5m x 0.3m and 60 vehicles at RD$400 each which would produce RD$24,000 per year. "We want to alert the citizens, because the risk is that 384 towns, each one with a different idea will create a national chaos", he stated.

Castillo said that "this is retaliation against the telephone companies because the municipalities feel that we are responsible that they don't have more money, and we are not responsible for that".

He referred to the fact that the Minister of the Hacienda, Vicente Bengoa, sent a note to the president of the Senate, Reinaldo Pared Perez, in which he says that the section that says that municipal taxes cannot overlap national taxes should be kept in the Constitution.

He says that the telephone companies pay national taxes and should not be charged with other taxes.

Other sectors has shown their worries over the matter, among then the National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP) and their 64 affiliates that understand that this would be improper and produce great institutional and economic conflicts because it affects judicial security and could serve to turn away investments due to unclear tax rules.

At the same time, the commercial and industrial associations of Santiago, the constructors of the Cibao, the store owners, vehicle distributors, and appliance importers in the Cibao had all expressed their view that this tax initiative would affect thousands of families and harm consumers that have to pay more all the time for goods and services.

The Executive Director of Adomtel said that the sector wants to keep Article 217 in the Constitution in order to guarantee that the municipalities cannot invent new taxes. He appealed to the National Revisory Assembly to take note of the concerns of the sector as they carry out the constitutional reform process.

He told reporters that Adomtel has not paid the invoice sent by the Santiago city government "since there is nothing to avoid changing the rules of the game".

"We do not oppose the idea of the cities obtaining more resources, what we are saying is that of each peso of income of the telephone companies, 45% goes to taxes, which means RD$23.0 billion a year. We cannot bear more taxes", he said.