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Cuba economy: Tax lessons as private sector grows
It is a process that fills many in the capitalist world with dread every year.
Now, for the first time, many in Communist-run Cuba are facing the same chore: filing a tax return.
It is more than a year since the government increased the number of licences available for privately-run business on the island.
In Havana, myriad DVD dealers and watch repairers, fritter sellers and cafes now jostle for custom on the roadside.
Cuba’s new entrepreneurs are free to earn more than the small state salary most workers take home of under $20 (£13) a month. But unlike state employees, they now have to pay taxes.
“It’ll take a bit of work for people to understand they have to pay,” says Maritza Ramos, a housewife-turned-seamstress who sells her colourful creations on a street stall.
“We haven’t had that concept here for years, so it will take a bit of getting used to.”
Cuba’s revolutionary leaders abolished personal income tax in the late 1960s.
It was reinstated in a limited form in the 1990s when the government allowed some private businesses to operate, softening the blow as Soviet subsidies to the island disappeared along with the USSR.
Pictured: Scores of Cubans have been setting up their own businesses
