Senate: Government Has the Authority to Impose Progressive Taxes Based on Taxpayers’ Ability to Pay

Senate: Government Has the Authority to Impose Progressive Taxes Based on Taxpayers’ Ability to Pay
Senate: Government Has the Authority to Impose Progressive Taxes Based on Taxpayers’ Ability to Pay
The Senate began, during its session on Thursday chaired by Senate President Faisal Al-Fayez and attended by Prime Minister Dr. Jaafar Hassan and the Cabinet, discussions on the draft General Budget Law for the 2026 fiscal year.اضافة اعلان

Rapporteur of the Senate’s Financial and Economic Committee, Engineer Amer Al-Hadidi, read the committee’s report on the draft budget law, stressing the need to adopt more realistic estimates when preparing the budget. The report also emphasized developing institutional capacities for implementing capital projects, strengthening financial oversight systems and public finance management, and achieving the highest levels of fiscal discipline, while adhering strictly to budget allocations under accountability provisions.

The report called for benefiting from the Greater Amman Municipality’s experience in transitioning to accrual-based budgeting when preparing future budgets, as well as for developing internal control systems and preventing overruns of allocated appropriations. It also urged the establishment of clear systems and instructions for the maintenance and preservation of government assets, and for defining the entities responsible for implementation and oversight.

It underscored the importance of having coordination mechanisms among sectors to ensure policy integration, achieve national objectives, and avoid conflicts between sectoral strategies. The report noted the multiplicity of entities concerned with unemployment and called for the creation of a unified coordinating body to ensure the integration of efforts and direct them toward reducing high unemployment rates. It also recommended establishing a central coordinating body for social protection programs, supported by a unified information center to ensure that programs reach the largest possible number of eligible beneficiaries efficiently and effectively.

The report further called for transparency with citizens regarding what the government can realistically provide within its capabilities, through aligning citizens’ needs for services and subsidized goods with the state’s financial capacity. It pointed out that the Constitution defines citizens’ rights and duties and grants the government the authority to impose taxes on a progressive basis that takes into account taxpayers’ ability to pay.

Additionally, the report recommended studying the fiscal impact of implementing major projects through public-private partnership arrangements.

— Petra