The World - News from July 15, 1988

Soviet Finance Minister Boris I. Gostev has been ordered for a second time to rewrite plans for taxing cooperative businesses, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda reported. It said Gostev’s report was sharply criticized at a meeting on Wednesday of the Presidium of the Soviet Council of Ministers, chaired by Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov. The newspaper gave no details of the latest proposal but said it was stressed that “the income tax system must stimulate the all-around development of the cooperative movement.” Gostev was rebuffed for the first time in May, when an ad hoc Soviet parliamentary commission called for changes in a tax decree that he had drafted before adoption of a new law on cooperatives. The law, which took effect July 1, is designed to spur the growth of businesses outside the state sector.