Taxation and cooperativism: the fiscal regime of the non-agricultural cooperatives (CNA) in Cuba

Abstract

Modern tax systems regulate, for cooperatives, a set of fiscal incentives that fundamentally seek to promote their creation over other economic subjects and motivate investment and creation of social funds. In the particular case of Cuba, where a socialist economic system prevails, the need to incentivize forms of social property over the private sector, acquires even greater significance, which is recognized in the Guidelines of the economic and social policy, approved in the VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba on April 18, 2011 and the Seventh Ordinary Session of the VII Legislature of the National Assembly of the People´s Power on August 1, 2011. That is why, in addition to the traditional agricultural cooperatives, in 2012 the creation of cooperatives called “non- agricultural” was approved. These cooperatives enjoy a special tax regime, regulated by Law No. 113 that was enacted in the same year, led by the benefits received in the tax levied on income (per capita income tax). However, the fiscal sacrifice involved in this type of regulation has no reason to be, if these are not aimed at the development of this form of management, which in this case is questionable, since the approval of new cooperatives is suspended and the Potential benefits are not aimed at promoting investment.