ZAGREB, 6 April 2022 - Physical Planning, Construction and State Assets Minister Ivan Paladina said on Wednesday that his wife's employment was in line with the law, that he did not see anything controversial about her salary, and being registered as receiving minimum wage was not a tax cheat.

"My wife was employed and registered in line with the law, as many other employees in private firms. I don't see anything contentious about that," Paladina said in Sisak.

"I have paid extremely high taxes and contributions for a large part of my career and I did not complain about it because it was in line with the law. It is all right to pay taxes in line with the law," said the minister.

Asked how he had acquired a number of land plots in Slavonia, Paladina said that it was a larger number of plots that had not been bought from the IGH construction company but were taken over based on claims from IGH bonds which he had acquired on the market and via a public auction.

"None of it is of Russian origin, everything is of Croatian origin. Everything I declared in my declaration of assets is a result of my work as a manager, my ventures as an entrepreneur and investments over the past 15 years or more," he said, adding that he had never held a public office before and had worked in the private sector and in line with market conditions.

Asked about his stake in the Kupari Luxury Hotels, Paladina said that it was not about a procedure to transfer stakes but a procedure to exit the company.

"I initiated that procedure two years ago and a court case is underway. It has not been completed and I cannot influence the dynamic of the proceedings, it's not correct to compare it with the transfer of business stakes," he stressed, adding that he did not sell his stake because there had been no buyers before just as there were none now.

Asked about the value of his declared assets, Paladina declined comment.

"A certain portion of the amount is an estimate. The amounts I declared are visible. I have worked and made money my whole life, you can see from my loans that I also risked a lot, it turned out that I worked and invested well," said Paladina.

For more, check out our dedicated politics section.

ZAGREB, July 25, 2020 - Legal amendments which will cancel the tax on property transactions could be in parliamentary procedure in the autumn, but when they could go into force remains unknown, Vecernji List daily said on Saturday.

As the ruling HDZ party promised in its parliamentary election campaign, the Andrej Plenkovic cabinet has announced that during this term it will cancel the 3% tax on property transactions, which last year brought local governments between HRK 1.1 billion and 1.2 billion, the paper said.

The tax revenue belongs to the towns and municipalities where properties are located. According to the Zagreb Institute of Economics, last year 111,000 properties in Croatia changed owners, first and foremost land and buildings whose value was HRK 40 billion.

In 2019, the year before COVID-19, property transactions accounted for 10% of the annual GDP. Most of the money (HRK 16.6 billion) was invested in the purchase of flats, buyers invested HRK 8.4 billion in building land, HRK 7.5 billion in family houses, and only HRK 1.8 billion in farmland. The average price of a flat sold was about HRK 630,000.

In the first half of this year, the value of properties sold dropped by 25% from H1 2019.

The government would not confirm if the 3% tax on property transactions will be cancelled at the beginning of 2021 or later.

According to unofficial reports, the government could put forward the relevant legal amendments in the autumn, when income tax is expected to be cut from 24% to 20% and from 36% to 30%, Vecernji List said, adding that property tax changes would depend on developments with the coronavirus.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)