Increases in fees and taxes in the 2025 budget for “Al -Nahar”: the budget is subject to appeal

It was surprising that the cabinet would acknowledge a budget in 2025 with increases in taxes and fees, the same budget that was prepared before the war in Lebanon expanded last September, that is, before the bill of damage to the Israeli aggression doubled. This budget was approved by ministerial decree with numbers that were considered unreasonable that should have been modified before approving the difficulty of the amendment course after the approval. He implicitly, Deputy Prime Minister of Tariq Mitri, admitted the gaps in the budget when he said, “In the 2025 budget, fees and penalties for the Lebanese, so this week, the Minister of Finance, Yassin Jaber, will submit an additional new bill to the government to reduce these fees to become less cruel to citizens.”

In this regard, the Chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee, Representative Ibrahim Kanaan, indicates that “after the budget government is approved, any amendment that will occur will be through the parliament and the government can send a law proposal for parliament to study and approve it, and this takes time, so it was better to recover and amend it in a short period not exceeding three weeks and then referring it to the council to approve it, and we are waiting for what the government pledged to send this week.”

According to Canaan, “every year the Ministry of Finance and the Government goes on adding fees and taxes without any financial, social or legal support.”

On the budget numbers and their realism, Canaan wonders, “Before the war, I prepared a budget in which the expenditures and revenues were added by 45 % from the 24th budget. Is this possible after the war?”

In response to a question about the constitutionality of the approval of the budget, Canaan explains that “in normal cases the government can approve the budget if the parliament fails to approve and discuss it in the legally specified deadline, but what happened that the budget project was referred in an exceptional circumstance, which is the war, when there was a paralysis in the constitutional institutions, especially in the House of Representatives due to Israel threatening some deputies to assassinate and bomb the capital Beirut what hindered the convening The sessions, in addition to the fact that the parliament agreed to propose the law of extension of the deadlines, and this was not withdrawn on the budget, and that was wrong, “adding,” All the budget figures should have been reconsidered after the war. ”

On the possibility of appealing this budget, Kanaan believes that all these violations can be reasons that require appeal.