€5,000 A Month For 15 Years: ONE Media Begins Process Of Paying Overdue Unpaid Tax Bill
A deal has been reached between the Labour Party’s media arm and Malta’s tax authorities after around 15 years of unpaid taxes.
ONE will be paying around €5,000 a month for the next 15 years, Times of Malta reported. This deal comes after months of negotiations, and after Lovin Malta initiated a constitutional court case against both ONE and Media.Link, the media arm of the Nationalist Party.
The two media houses owe around €5 million in unpaid VAT between them.
Negotiations began after the media house received a formal notice from tax authorities after years of not paying what they owed the state.
The PN confirmed that discussions between Media.Link and the tax authorities over a similar repayment scheme for the PN media house are ongoing.
This is the second tax repayment scheme that the party media houses are entering into in recent years. Back in 2014 and 2015, both ONE and Media.Link agreed to make monthly payments of around €20,000 over and above interest, which they didn’t honour.
Lovin Malta has issued a legal challenge against the constitutionality of political broadcasting on political party media.
The court case argues that a law approved by Parliament in 1991 to permit the stations to broadcast political propaganda went completely contrary to the demands of the Constitution, which states that TV news should be impartial.
Lovin Malta is also arguing that financial difficulties also render the political parties highly vulnerable to corruption since they are dependent on big business donations.
The PN and PL have regularly been asked to explain why they haven’t published their accounts in several years – ONE since 2009 and Media.Link since 2003. Promises to publish the accounts continue to be unrealised, raising serious doubts over the financial structures of these two massive media organisations.
Rather than remedy the issue, the PN and PL have continued breaching regulations with little to no reprieve from authorities.
Find out more about the case and the two media arms long-standing issues by checking out the official Kaxxaturi website.
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