Direct discrimination by employers and less profitable sectors in which women choose to start their own businesses are some of the main reasons why they make up only 9 percent of the top earners in Serbia last year.
As the Tax Administration said, out of a total of 34,753 tax returns that determine the annual personal income tax for 2021, as many as 91 percent of the returns were submitted by men, which means that about 3,000 were submitted by women.
Taxpayers, who in the previous year had an income greater than 3,268,224 dinars, i.e. more than three average monthly salaries in our country, are required by law to file a tax return.
Thus, the richest citizen in 2021 reported an income of 2,115 million dinars, i.e. somewhere around 18 million euros. According to the Tax Administration’s records, the top earners in Serbia are company directors, senior managers, engineers, lawyers and economists and 69% of them come from Belgrade.
In 2020, just like in 2021, 91% of tax returns were submitted by men, an increase from 2019 (when that percentage stood at 88) and 2018 (when it stood at 86%).
Dragoljub Rajić, the coordinator at the Business Support Network, explains this data by saying that men are either employees or predominantly owners of companies that operate in the most profitable sectors – construction and IT.
Women, on the other hand, if they decide to set up their own business, it is mostly related to retail/wholesale trade and to a lesser extent, to consulting and management.
Although there is a growing trend in the number of women who choose to open companies in the IT sector in the last ten years, due to the environment in which we live, they are still few and far between.
(Danas, 11.10.2022)