A member of the National Assembly warned that the economic reforms approved by the Cuban government will not be able to finance social protection if the state does not manage to collect taxes effectively, in a context where tax evasion is recognized as a structural problem.
Carlos Miguel Pérez Reyes, deputy and president of a small and medium-sized enterprise specialized in programming and IT activities, made the statements on the state television program "Cuadrando la Caja," a few days after the National Assembly ratified the 176 economic measures.
"We are not accustomed to paying taxes in Cuba, but it is precisely that tax, and all these transformations without taxes, that do not benefit the social sector. If we do not manage to collect that tax and allocate it for social protection, we are essentially doing this to generate the resources needed to invest in that," she said.
Pérez Reyes admitted that “the inequalities are already here,” and that the goal is to strengthen institutions to prevent tax evasion, “which is currently a very serious problem in Cuban society.”
The deputy also acknowledged that the reforms are coming late and under pressure: "We should have taken these initiatives a long time ago; we are only now starting to do so. It has been difficult, as consensus was hard to achieve. It is true that the context forced us to act more quickly, more quickly than we would have liked."
For his part, Yan Pedro Carbonell Karell, director of macroeconomic policies at the Central Bank of Cuba, defended the shift towards targeted social protection "for those who truly need it the most."
"For many years we provided equal protection to everyone, and in that way, when there is a decrease in the material resources to do so, you end up protecting those who need it the most less," he emphasized.
However, Rafael Montejo, director of the Center for Studies on Management Techniques at the University of Havana, admitted that the new measures will deepen social gaps: “They will also create inequalities, and we need to address these inequalities; we must identify them.”
The debate takes place amidst an unprecedented economic crisis.
The ECLAC projects a contraction of the Cuban GDP of 6.5% for 2026, the worst in Latin America, while the fiscal deficit exceeds 74.5 billion Cuban pesos. The accumulated contraction since 2019 reaches 23%.
Tax evasion is not a minor issue: the National Office of Tax Administration (ONAT) detected evasion of almost 820 million pesos between January and May 2024.
To tackle it, the regime approved Resolution 126/2026, which authorizes the ONAT to debit tax debts directly from bank accounts without the account holder's consent, effective from July 18.
The 176 reforms include the removal of the cap of 100 workers for private SMEs, the authorization of private banking, non-state exchange houses, foreign investment in the private sector, and the gradual introduction of VAT.
They are also eliminating the universal subsidy for the basic food basket, which has been in place since 1962, restricting it to retirees and vulnerable individuals.
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