By Melissa

The first topic will be about the new changes in the "Ministerio de Hacienda". Some people are agree but there is a movement which is not.

Eddi 7

This is a program which is used for making the taxes form to present them at the "Ministerio de Hacienda," the institution of the goverment wich collects all the taxes fom people and companies.

"Eddi" has always existed but now it has a difference, it has been changed in order to have a better control of the taxes and the goverment has the idea to make mandatory to use this program.

Some benefits are:

1- It makes the income tax return easier.

2- It calculates the taxes interests automatically.

3- It doesn't needs a password to enter so everybody can use it.

4- Everybody can upload the income tax return to a web page to present it to the goverment.

Disadvantages:

1- The file can't be saved in any electronic device like a USB, CD, etc. so everybody can print it.

2- You can only use it to make 3 forms: income tax return, sales taxes and pay receipts.

3- Not everybody in Costa Rica can hace acces to it, specifically people who lives in rural places.

The third one for us is the most important because the goverment want to make it mandatory so people who lives in the rural zones will have a lot of problems with it. We should think that in Costa Rica only 40% of the people have access to internet so what will happen to the other 60%? And the stadistics are worst in the rural zones because in those places only 5% of the people has access to it. So what will happen to the other 95%?

The program is so helpful we agree, but the problem that we have with that is that people who lives outside the metropolitan aerea will have serious difficultties and in a country like Costa Rica, which has a lot of rural zones we think that this is not a good opportunity.

We have Guanacaste as an example. The goverment has an office in Liberia and peolple from Tamarindo, Cañas, Abangares, Nicoya, Tilarán, La Cruz, etc. have to go to Liberia, a travel that can take 3 hours just only because you have to use the program.

The service is free. I mean, if you don't have a computer you can go to the office that the goverment has in Liberia. But if you think in the money that you have to spend to go there and the time that it takes to go from a rural place to the offices that the goverment have.

What do you think?