President of Latvia Raimonds Vējonis called for noting that the proposed amendments might have significant impact on availability of cultural events to a large part of the Latvian population. In many cases, expensiveness of tickets was an obstacle preventing more often attendance of cultural events, especially in rural areas. The President of Latvia also stressed that the induced amendments were not sufficiently discussed in the cultural sector then, and potential impact of the amendments was not thoroughly considered. “The proposed regulation can both restrict competition in the provision of cultural services and reduce the opportunities of the population to attend theatre performances, concerts and other cultural events,” said the President of Latvia.
The officials agreed that the amendments to the VAT regulation for cultural events should be carefully discussed among the representatives of the cultural sector. Officials also came to an agreement that the amendments proposed to the Value Added Tax Act in the package of annual state budget for 2016 should not be supported. In 2016, work would be continued in order to evaluate expected impact of the amendments to the VAT regulation and to determine precise and clearly applicable VAT regulation to providers of cultural services.
During the meeting, the officials also discussed the drafting process of annual state budget. The President of Latvia encouraged the Minister of Finance to fight with the shadow economy more actively, to evaluate further opportunities to expand the application of reverse VAT in certain sectors, and to pay more attention to more stringent control of natural resources tax relief.