İYİ Party leader criticizes gov’t over high taxes
ISTANBUL
İYİ (Good) Party chair Meral Akşener has criticized the government for imposing high taxes on staple food products while zeroing the special consumption tax on luxury and precious stones.
“The amount of all the taxes collected between 1923 and 2002 when the [ruling Justice and Development Party] AK Party came to power is 1.89 trillion Turkish Liras. Well, the amount of the taxes collected by the AK Party government in the last 18 years is 3.1 trillion liras,” Akşener told her party’s group meeting in parliament on April 21.
“What do we expect when the taxes are so high? We expect a cash-rich state with most reserves in its Central Bank and lowest interest rates. But we cannot find any of these despite the high taxes,” she said.
Those who can afford luxury villas or expensive cars do not pay tax even as much as a worker with a minimum wage and this creates a very deep injustice within the society, Akşener stated.
“The special consumption tax has become one of the most important tools of this injustice. The government which collects this ÖTV from everything, including fundamental needs for childcare, has zeroed the tax in the sale of precious stones like diamonds, luxury yachts and fur,” Akşener said.
Akşener also repeated her questions about what happened to the $128 billion of the Central Bank which the opposition blames the government for using this reserve to avoid a further devaluation of the Turkish Lira against foreign currencies.
