Proposal to distribute oil revenues to citizens – Mehdi

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A Higher Islamic Council prominent leader demanded that the Iraqi government should distribute oil revenues to eliminate the millions of people living below the poverty line and to adopt movable tax policy, according to Adala newspaper today. In his daily article in the paper, former vice president Adel Abdul Mehdi demanded the implementation of Article 11 of the Constitution which stipulates the people’s ownership of oil and gas. “This attempt will minimize the burden on the government for employment and will kick start the Iraqi economy and end state monopoly,” he wrote. He added that the Iraqi government should have movable tax policy that will help the government to earn its revenues from these taxes. It is known that oil income reaches 90 trillion dinars, which is meant to be divided among 30 million people, meaning each will receive 3 million dinars annually. He suggested that part of the citizen’s income should be deducted as a tax for his “oil income,” pointing to 70 percent as a good figure. Thus, the government will have 63 trillion dinars to be added to other revenues to form the Iraqi budget. Each citizen will receive 75,000 dinars as monthly income, which means 450,000 dinars for each family on the basis that each family consists of 6 persons, in addition to additional income that the family itself earns, he added. According to Mehdi, these figures will nearly exempt the Iraqi citizen from indulging in the poverty line. He notes that many obstacles will face such a plan, including a lack of desire to work, begging, and social ranks and turning the citizens to be state officials. RM (TR)/SR 231