Micro enterprises should be “automatically exempt from any new regulation” and ought to be excused from conducting audits, Budget 2013 proposals from the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises, GRTU suggest.
It should rather be up to the ministry steering the new law to lobby to have it apply to micro businesses, especially given the lack of impact assessments.
The GRTU proposals argue red tape and the relatively high cost of loans for micro firms are choking business and that regulation must be loosened if such small companies are to flourish.
“Think small first is more than just a phrase,” the proposals say. “It is a political, economic commitment towards the 97.7 per cent of Maltese firms that are micro.”
Nestled amid its business-related proposals, the GRTU had damning words for the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s enforcement of packaging waste legislation.
Any previous gains, the GRTU said, had been “swiftly dismantled in 2012” by handing the responsibility of policing the legislation to Mepa’s Enforcement Directorate.
State aid levels to SMEs were also too low, the GRTU said. While EU member states spent 9.5 per cent of their regional funds on such enterprises, just 2.8 per cent of Maltese SMEs got any such help.
They insisted that 25 per cent of government business should go to small businesses, and called on authorities to guide private investment through schemes similar to Malta Enterprise’s Create scheme.
Although the GRTU acknowledged SMEs now had greater access to capital thanks to schemes such as Micro Credit – called “exceptionally successful” – it insisted loan costs remained too high.
It also called on the Government to implement the “years overdue” EU-piloted Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive.
Although the directive has been part of Maltese law since 2007, it has yet to be implemented, with producers instead paying the Government an eco-contribution to offset their electrical waste.
The GRTU has said it suspects the Government is reluctant to implement the directive because doing so would cost it €8 million in lost revenue, but its proposals argue that implementation would place the onus on producers to work within the law and “mean one less infringement notice for Malta”.
It proposed some specific measures for Valletta entrepreneurs, arguing that CVA charges should stop at 1pm and shops in the capital merited a special tax reduction.
Property purchases could be stimulated by exempting homes bought before the year’s end from any future changes in property tax, the GRTU suggested, while first-time buyers should only pay half the usual tax on their home purchase.
The union also suggested exempting working pensioners from paying tax on their pension, as well as fixing the “anomaly” of pensioners being made to pay for National Insurance at the same rates as working people.