The House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina unanimously passed amendments to the Value Added Tax (VAT) Law, enabling a VAT refund for Bosnian citizens buying their first home. Despite numerous objections raised, the proposal passed with broad support.

Mia Karamehic-Abazovic, a representative of NIP, commented on whether this law would primarily benefit real estate investors. According to her, the amendments specifically target new housing. “For older properties that have already been sold, VAT is not charged, so there was no question of exemption,” she explained. “Some cantons in the Federation of BiH, as well as Republika Srpska, have their own real estate transfer taxes—buyers pay these in Sarajevo, while employers pay in RS.”

Karamehic-Abazovic further highlighted that no amendments were proposed on this draft law except for those by the Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), which were incorporated into the text. “We listened to the opposition and thus moved forward with the regular procedure. During the period between the first and second readings, we only received amendments from PDP, which we included to set a maximum price limit to avoid encouraging excessively high property prices.”

Critics have argued that the VAT refund could negatively impact the national budget. “Critics overestimated the deficit,” Karamehic-Abazovic noted. “The state earns around 150 million KM from VAT on new construction annually, and a lot of that includes people buying their second, third, or even fourth properties—not just those buying for the first time.”

Regarding Bosnia's legislative alignment with the EU, Karamehić-Abazović remarked, “As always, we are running late, completing things at the very last moment. This should have been done quicker. There’s nothing contentious in any of these four laws—we need to adopt legislation aligned with the EU if we want to move forward.”

She also emphasized the absurdity of using issues like personal data protection as reasons for delay, saying, “It's completely irrational to use these as arguments.”