The Liberal Initiative has introduced a bill proposing to eliminate nearly all tax breaks for political parties and drastically cut subsidies, both for funding political forces and campaigns.
The Liberals’ bill, which aims to amend the law governing the financing of political parties, also abolishes campaign grants based on election results and distributes public money equally to all parties that meet minimum criteria for representation .
“Democracy has costs, but they don’t have to be as high as they used to be,” IL justifies in the explanatory memorandum to the diploma, available on the website of the Assembly of the Republic.
The Liberals say that, at a time when “the value of taxes levied on the Portuguese is at an all-time high”, political parties are “exempt from most taxes and also receive tens of millions of euros in government subsidies paid by the taxes of Portuguese”.
“The current law grants benefits to political parties that are denied to citizens. This is an inequality before the law that we cannot tolerate,” they say.
However, the party admits that the democratic system has “representation costs, for which the parties must be compensated”.
“However, we believe that this amount has been too high. Therefore, we propose to reduce the total amounts attributable to parties. In the case of government subsidy to fund political parties, we propose a reduction of approximately 40% of the amount is currently paid to political parties and is still awarded on the basis of the number of votes,” they refer.
In terms of campaign grants, IL believes that the current model “is not only outrageously expensive” but “benefits the largest parties and those who are already part of the system”.
“If the purpose of the campaign grant is to ensure some degree of equality of campaign resources, limiting the grant to the parties that elect representatives goes against this principle,” they argue, proposing to to award an equal amount to each of the parties “cumulatively vying for at least half of the constituencies” and “running for constituencies corresponding to at least 51 percent of the mandates for the Assembly of the Republic or for the regional legislative assemblies”.
Currently, only 20% of the subsidy is distributed equally among all parties and candidates and the remaining 80% is distributed in proportion to the election result obtained.
The IL is not proposing an increase in private funding to compensate for the loss of public funds, which it maintains within current limits, but defends “the need for parties to be much more frugal and seek much greater efficiency in planning their campaigns.” “.
The diploma stipulates that the government subsidy to the parties shall be equal to a fraction of 1/220 of the value of the Social Support Index (IIAS) for each vote gained in the most recent election of deputies to the Assembly of the Republic , while the current law sets a value of 1/135, which according to the party means a reduction of 40%.
In the tax benefits article, IL only claims that parties are not subject to IRC, repealing all others, including exemptions from IMI, IMT, car tax, VAT, or even court fees.
In the case of electoral campaign grants, the IL reduces its total value to one-tenth in most elections: for example, under current law, this can be as much as 20,000 times the value of the IAS in elections to the Assembly of the Republic (current values, 9.6 million euros), which reduces the IL to 2,000 times (maximum 960,000 euros), a rule that applies to all votes.
Along the same lines, the IL also reduces to one-tenth of the current value the maximum allowable limits of spending in each election campaign, national or regional. For example, in a campaign for president of the republic, the maximum expenditure limit would increase from 4.8 million euros to 480 thousand.
Source: DN
