​For Malta to succeed in converging with the European average per capita income in the forseeable future, it must ensure that its economic growth rate keeps increasing more than the EU average year on year, Finance Minister Prof. Edward Scicluna said on Thursday, 24th September 2015. He was addressing a graduation ceremony of the Malta Institute of Taxation held at the University of Malta.

Minister Scicluna pointed out that, at the moment, Malta’s per capita income stands at between 75 and 78 per cent of the EU median. He said that in this context, Malta remains adamantly against tax harmonisation in the EU, warning that it would restrain economic growth in developing countries and sound their death knell.
Minister Scicluna stressed that taxation is a very serious affair: if not handled well, it can ruin an economy, while higher taxation stifles entrepreneurship and initiative.

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“Taxation changes one’s behaviour and we have to be careful to change in the right direction,” said Prof. Scicluna. “We are working to make work pay,  by reducing income tax. We are proud to be doing this while maintaining – and even switching marginally to – consumption taxes. At the moment Malta is first in the EU for the least level of taxation on labour.”

At the end of the ceremony, the Minister presented the certificates to 49 students who graduated Diploma in Taxation.

– Friday, 25th September, 2015