Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said in Brussels on Friday that the Lisbon Strategy’s aim at creating more growth and jobs across the EU will demand a greater female participation rate in the Maltese labour market, currently the lowest in Europe.
“It was brought to our attention that we have to improve on this target, and that is why we have introduced new measures to increase the number of women employed,” Gonzi said.
The prime minister in fact said this was one of Malta’s “weakest points” in the national reform programme – the plan that maps out Malta’s Lisbon targets – but said new budgetary measures had already been implemented.
He said Malta had “had its ear tugged” over the issue of low female employment rates.
Government only recently removed a restriction on tax credits for women re-entering the world of work specifically after five years’ absence, now making the credits available for women entering family businesses.
Previously, women were not eligible for the €1,630 (Lm700) tax credit if their new employers were family relatives or a company in which they or their relatives are shareholders.
Back then the government claimed the rules had been structured in a way as to curb any abuse on taxation. Then social policy and employment ministers Dolores Cristina and Louis Galea claimed that without restricting the tax credit, “an employer could easily give a salary to his spouse or son or daughter or other relative without the latter actually doing the work and then benefiting from the tax credit. This would have defeated the whole purpose of this measure and would have given a ‘tax holiday’ to the employer on part of his income.”
The new measures however do away with the restriction, as the government is doing its utmost in achieving Lisbon targets to increase the rate of women in the labour market.
It means that women are now eligible for tax credits even if their employers are their parents, spouses or parents-in-law, children or their spouses, siblings and their spouses, or where the employer is a company in which the woman or any of the ‘barred’ employers are directly or indirectly a shareholder.

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt

Tax credits
www.maltatoday.com.mt/2005/05/08/t8.html