Income tax on large importers is suspended for three years

Not long after the coup, income tax collection stopped for a three-year period, supposedly as compensation for families of the oligarchy who had suffered property damage during the insurgency they had themselves sponsored. The authors note a finding by Schuller that the break was directed at large importers only, and that the interim government formed under Gérard Latortue also lowered the tariff on imported rice. As the last remaining price controls and import regulations were lifted, the leading importing families took advantage of the decline in local agricultural production to help push food prices up by around four hundred percent, with the price of rice already doubling within five months of the February coup. Their own estimates put the same mechanism at work generally: retail prices of goods imported by coup participants rise about 1.8 percent a month faster during autocratic periods.