Coronadvice 16 - April Coronavirus Pranks

On this first day of April, we have decided to point out a few situations where everything is actually different from it seems.

The Ministry of Finance is preparing to abolish the real estate tax, so you will save when you buy an apartment. Gotcha! Only some people will save a money.

Currently, real estate acquisition tax is 4% of the value of the property, and is paid by the purchaser. That is a significant amount. For example, you will pay 220,000 crowns more when purchasing an apartment for 5.5 million crowns. New purchasers should not pay this, but the Ministry of Finance also plans to cancel the tax application of deductions for mortgage interest. Therefore, only people who buy an apartment or house from their own savings and without a mortgage will save money because of this change.

If the state really wants to help with taxes, it would be preferable to remove the payment of value added tax or income tax.

Will you borrow money from a COVID loan to support your business and be able to save everything. Gotcha! You will borrow, pay for everything, and lose everything.

The Czech-Moravian Guarantee and Development Bank (ČMZRB) approved the first applications of small and medium-sized enterprises for interest-free loans from the COVID I program. In addition to the fact that this program can no longer be used, one of the conditions was to ensure the repayment of the loan through a blank bill of exchange, i.e. without a completed amount. In practice, this can mean that an entrepreneur can lose everything if they borrow money. If we do not know when the current emergency restrictions will be lifted, a request for assistance through this loan for entrepreneurs may result in their personal bankruptcy.

As the COVID I program was a great success, the follow-up COVID II project was announced. We do not yet know the conditions under which the banks will provide loans under the follow-up COVID II program. COVID II guarantee applications and its annexures will not be published until tomorrow, i.e. at 8am on Thursday, 2nd April 2020.

The government has prohibited children from going to school, so they have to enrol into distance learning. Gotcha!. There is no obligation to enrol into distance learning.

Schools should either be closed and teaching stopped, or they should be open and students should attend them according to the Education Act, the Framework Education Program, and the school education program. The wording of the government in a crisis measure: “a ban on pupils' personal participation in education” is really confusing. The Education Act does not allow for the possibility that pupils learn at home. Therefore, if personal participation in school is forbidden, and the Education Act does not provide for distance education, with some exceptions, should pupils learn remotely? No, no one can be forced to do what the law does not impose on them. They can centainly learn at home voluntarily.

In our opinion, the correct procedure would be an interim amendment to the Education Act, or,  a clearer instruction for home education resulting from a crisis measure. The amendment of the maturita examination, and the extension of the period of payment of the nursing allowance was followed by a temporary amendment to the Act.