Turmix - mixture

Income per agriculture worker has increased 41.8% from 2010 to 2011 (was 74.5% higher than in 2005) in Hungary, says Eurostat. How come?

As usual, the New Year means the modification of some tax rules. This package was published in the official journal the 29th November. The 9th December the law which was intended to be the foundation for the 2012 budget, already modified it over four pages. (it was voted the 28th November, i.e. one day before the previous one was published).
The law about associations, public benefit organisations and the operation of and support for NGOs, published the 14th December, contained another three pages of modifications. The law about court registration and procedures thereof the 22nd December: another three pages.
The mentioned law about the foundation of the 2012 budget modified further five laws due to come into effect the 1st January, and itself was also modified three times (including once when the law about churches contained a deletion of one point of it). Further similar cases of other laws is listed here.
Update: the law on investment fund management organisations and collective investment service companies contains a further change: the deadline for reimbursing the VAT claims has been extended ( remember, there was a Court decision which found a limitation of tax reimbursement contradicting to European law). This hurts exporters and investing companies…

Still there is one case to be mentioned: An amendment to the law about the protection of non-smokers enabled smoking in casinos where there is no assigned smokers' area. A couple of hours (maybe this is an exaggeration but that's what the association against the smoking of children established) later, another amendment, voted before, came into force which forbid smoking in casinos altogether (again).
The tobacco lobby seams to be strong - in particular in the rows of the Christian Democrat party (an associate of FIDESZ with no independent existence and apparently no followers) as they already came forward with amendments which stopped Parliament from increasing the excise duty on tobacco.

A public procurement notice of 800 million forints (2.7 million Euro at the moment, in normal times closer or above 3 million Euro) for a media strategy has been just announced.

And a nice video, Viktor Orbán is asked whether he feels his responsibility for the disastrous performance of the forint. First he tells that the president of the National Bank did not fell responsible than repeats it and then says: "neither". The smile afterwards tells everything...