Earlier this week, Havana announced a two-month amnesty for gun owners across the country to register their unlicensed guns and thus (ideally, but probably not actually) eliminate the illegal gun culture in the country.
Today, perhaps on a related bent to curb illegality in all its forms and better account for the true situation in the country, the Cuban government announced that it will begin offering pensions to self-employed artists and performers, calculating benefits based on the taxable income they declare. The hope here is that such artists (musicians, writers, movie and television performers, sculptors and painters) will now more honestly report income and the state will be able to account better for the full economy. In previous years, state policy excluded these self-employed individuals from pensions, causing many to underreport incomes in order to pay less in taxes that were required of them—at least 7% of total income in addition to year-end returns with additional payments.
With the new policy in place, this group of individuals (how many is not clear) will be eligible to receive monthly government pensions of 60% of their reported income starting at age 65 for men and 60 for women.
(Photo from enforex.com)
