Dominican think tank warns a mum Medina on online tax row

Santo Domingo.- President Danilo Medina’s habit of letting national issues balloon to crises while keeping mum has prompted Dominican Republic’s most prestigious legal think tank to make an urgent call for his position on the Customs Agency’s decision to tax online purchases of less than US$200.

The Institutionalism and Justice Foundation (Finjus) said Medina "needs to speak out, because it appears that a director, who’s part of a Ministry, amends, not only a decree, but what was the legislator’s intention.”

Finjus executive vice president Serbio Tulio Castaños Guzmán warned that from the institutional standpoint, “it’s dangerous for a government agency to modify a decree or provision approved by Congress. "That’s not possible since that could create anarchy, because any agency by provision, could issue resolutions that could clash with laws and decrees."

Castaños noted however that although Finjus doesn’t debate the tax or economic aspects and its institutionalism instead, “the mechanism currently used is not correct.”