The BE will come to parliament on Tuesday with proposals for amendments to the budget to definitively end the ‘golden visa’ and introduce a tax on extraordinary profits in the food, energy and banking sectors.
To these two proposed amendments to the National Budget for 2023, submitted today, the blockers are adding a third proposal that aims to limit the variation in the pace of home loan efforts.
Speaking to Lusa, BE’s parliament leader Pedro Filipe Soares said the party will move forward with the three proposed amendments because “they help solve problems that affect the lives of thousands of people”, but not only.
“There is a second reason that justifies the presentation: it is that in all countries the government, despite acknowledging the problems, despite recognizing that they deserve actions, in fact talks a lot but does absolutely nothing. And every day that does nothing, makes the problems pile up,” the blockist leader accused.
Regarding the “golden visa” – the end of which is being evaluated by the executive, according to statements by the Prime Minister last week – Pedro Filipe Soares recalled that “the PS and the government were obstacles” to this goal and the result is that “Today a significant amount of speculation in the big cities and in the major urban centers stems from the activity that has been going on in the very recent past about the ‘gold visas'”.
“The government now recognizes this damaging effect, but there is no proposal to abolish ‘gold visas’. And therefore, despite seeing the PS fail several times already, we present it with the expectation that the PS content to the findings it now finds inevitable,” he insisted.
Next year, BE also wants to apply an extraordinary rate “in terms of corporate tax (IRC) of 25%” on “that part of the taxable income for the year 2022 that is higher than 10% taxable income for the year 2020”.
The blockers suggest that “taxpayers resident in Portuguese territory, as well as non-resident taxpayers with a permanent establishment in Portuguese territory, whose principal activity is energy, food distribution or banking, who have annual taxable profits exceeding one million euros five hundred thousand euros”.
As for the need to tax excessive profits, Pedro Filipe Soares accused the executive of having started by denying “the obvious” and then “unwillingly” acknowledging this reality, but insisting that the country already had “a tax fairness that required no changes”. Now, “only with European pressure, it opened the door to being able to rethink this reality,” he added.
During this period, the blocker lamented, “profits accumulated” and “companies realized that abuse in times of crisis actually pays because the government allows such compensation”.
“And we believe it is essential to restore justice where it did not exist, in the profits that have been generated in the past that must now be returned to public action, to public policy, to ensure that there is more investment capacity to respond.” on the crisis, but also to have a deterrent effect so that the part of inflation that comes from the abuse of these groups, many of which are almost monopolistic, ceases to exist,” he stressed.
Finally, BE calls for a proposal that aims to limit the variation in the effort rate for home loans, stipulating that it should not exceed two percentage points compared to the 2021 average and that under no circumstances should it exceed 50 % may be.
Pedro Filipe Soares criticized the measures proposed by the government for “relying in practice on the free acceptance of the banks” and believed that the BE proposal now has “greater capacity”.
This project was generally approved as early as October, but it is waiting in the Budget and Finance Committee until the end of the budget debate, suspending all other parliamentary activities until the vote.
For this reason, BE is pushing for the proposal, as “the budget law will come into force sooner than any other law coming out of parliament”, warning that “with each week that goes by without answers, the situation of families becomes more difficult”.
The deadline for submitting proposed amendments to the 2023 state budget ends Friday (11) and the final general vote is scheduled for November 25.
Source: DN
