Lawyers to go on strike

BELGRADE - All lawyers in Serbia will on Wednesday go on strike until the end of the week in protest against a lump sum tax increase.

Belgrade-based lawyers stopped working last Wednesday, while the assembly of the Bar Association of Serbia (AKS) has decided that lawyers in other parts of the country should join the strike from June 25 to 27, AKS President Dragoljub Djordjevic told Tanjug.

The lawyers decided to go on strike after their tax liabilities have been multiplied and want the Finance Ministry to scrap the new tax regulations relating to law practice and lump sum taxation.

The protest also comes after the adoption of various regulations that take many affairs out of the hands of lawyers and entrust them to notaries and mediators, the AKS said.

The Ministry of Finance, which has introduced the controversial decree on the lump sum tax increase, sees the lawyers' protest as illegitimate.

Photo Tanjug, Z. Zestic (illustration)