Prime Minister Ana Brnabic announced today that within the next few weeks she will propose to the National Assembly a set of measures for youth employment, which entail changes to the legislation, as well as tax benefits for companies that employ them.
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A:
New youth employment measures as of 1 January
Belgrade,
23 September 2019
At a joint press conference at the Serbian Chamber of Commerce with Minister of Finance Sinisa Mali and representatives of companies, Brnabic said that she expects these measures, together with all the previous ones, to ensure faster economic growth and development, a better standard of living for citizens, higher wages, and certainly a dramatic reduction in youth unemployment.
The proposed measures, as she explained, include changes to the Law on Personal Income Tax and to the Law on Contributions for Compulsory Social Security.
These changes will provide tax incentives for new hires in companies that increase the number of employees, including the employment of young people who are just entering the labour market, as well as legal certainty regarding tax treatment when hiring lump-sum entrepreneurs.
The Prime Minister explained that as of 1 January next year, companies that will increase the number of employees and employ persons who have not worked in 2019 will be exempt from paying 70 percent of the payroll tax and contributions for the Pension and Insurance Fund for those persons in full throughout 2020 and for the most part during 2021 and 2022.
The measure will target the employment of previously unemployed persons, regardless of whether they have been registered with the National Employment Service, are students or lump-sum entrepreneurs, she specified.
In this way, she said, the effective reduction of total liabilities will amount to approximately 70 percent in 2020, 65 percent in 2021 and 60 percent in 2022.
Brnabic stated that the categories of persons that this benefit refers to are those unemployed in the period from 1 January 2019 to 30 April 2020, provided that they start working by the end of 2020, and entrepreneurs who have not been employed during 2019, provided that they start working by 30 April 2020.
The Prime Minister noted that unemployment in Serbia is 10.3 percent, and in April 2012 it was over 25 percent.
That is a good result, but we are still not happy. With the new measures, we want to give a clear signal to companies that they have the motivation to employ young people and to the young that they should stay in Serbia, she underlined.
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