Colombian High Court Overturns Tax Measures, El Tiempo Reports

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Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A Colombian high court overturned three articles of a tax bill approved last year, an action that will cost the government about 100 billion pesos ($35 million) in lost revenue a year, El Tiempo reported.

The Constitutional Court overturned an 11 percent sales tax on beer, leaving a previous 8 percent tax in effect, the Bogota daily newspaper said. The court also overturned a measure that reduced to 80 percent from 100 percent an income tax deduction permitted on industry, commerce and real estate taxes paid.

The court also overturned a 5 percent gambling tax. The measures were overturned because congress approved them without following the proper procedures, such as debating the changes in joint committees of congress, the daily said.

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1. Colombia Govt Investigating Reports Of 13 Peasants Killed

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BOGOTA (AP)--A government commission headed toward a village in southwestern Colombia Thursday to investigate reports that armed men massacred at least 13 peasants there, a human rights official said.

Carlos Mayo, the regional representative of the nation's human rights ombudsman's office in the state of Narino, told RCN Radio that homicide investigators of the attorney general's office alerted him to the attack in the town of Llorente, 550 kilometers southwest of the capital, Bogota.

It wasn't clear who the assailants were, Maya said. Illegal armed fighters of leftist rebel groups as well as right-wing paramilitary forces operate in the region.

Paramilitary fighters are accused of committing the majority of massacres in the nation's long-simmering war, though rebels are also blamed for a long list of atrocities.


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