By: Garland M. Baker B.
Exclusive to A.M. Costa Rica
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Transparency and Justice are teaming up and, using the synergy of information technologies and law, will surely prevail in collecting more taxes from everyone.
Transparency sits alongside Accountability, implying an openness and willingness to accept public scrutiny, decreasing the capacity for deception, as in hiding money from the tax people. Typically, transparency is used when discussing oversight of public officials. Now it is the individual citizen whose holdings and life is transparent. The concept has been referred to as the Transparency Phantom in a previous article.
In practice, Transparency means a free exchange of information, access to facilities, and cooperative arrangements to provide ready observation and verification of all kinds of information, especially personal financial information.
The new fiscal plan of Costa Rica, if passed on second reading, will create a new authority, The National Council of Transparency and Accountability. The new office, an organ of the legislature, will have functional and administrative independence from the rest of government.
