The president of Chega party admitted today that his party may vote against the government’s proposal to reduce marginal rates of personal income tax and make the PS proposal viable, claiming that it is closer to his own.
At a press conference in the Portuguese Parliament, André Ventura said that he had not received “any negotiations, proposals, counter-proposals or openings from the government or the PSD parliamentary group regarding the change in tax legislation” and accused the executive and the Social Democrats of showing arrogance, warning that “it will not lead to good results in the future”.
The president of Chega said that he had made institutional contacts but had received “no response so far”.
Asked if he might vote against the government’s proposal, the Chega leader said that “there is that risk”.
As to whether he could make the PS bill viable, he replied: “If [the proposal] is positive, we’ll accept it, if it reduces taxes, we’ll accept it.”
“At the moment we admit everything, because what we want is to lower taxes,” he said, arguing that the Portuguese “don’t care” which parties approved the measure.
The president of Chega said it was “bizarre and caricatured that the Chega and PS proposals have more objectives in common than the AD government’s proposal”, pointing out that his party and the Socialists “seek to reduce taxes on those who earn less”, while the government’s proposal “seems to go in the opposite direction, of wanting to benefit those who earn more”.
“Chega is going to fight for the proposal that lowers taxes the most for the Portuguese to be approved. And I want to make it clear to the government, there is nothing holding us back. If we feel that there is a proposal that lowers taxes more, we will make that possible too,” he warned.
André Ventura called on the government to “step down from its pedestal and realize that it has to negotiate and that the right-wing will come up with a proposal to lower taxes for those who earn less, not for those who earn more”.
The Chega leader wants the executive to change its proposal to “ensure that the impact on the 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 euro brackets is the highest” and “stop doing favors for the richest, which they don’t need”.
“I hope that there will be common sense on the part of the government by the end of today so that we can come up with a closer proposal that will mainly benefit those who earn up to 2,000 euros gross, which is the vast majority of the Portuguese people,” he appealed.
On Monday, when he presented his proposal, André Ventura said that he would try to “reach a consensus” with the AD, to whom he asked for “a sign of good will”, and indicated that, “if there is total unwillingness on the part of either the PSD or the PS” to approve his proposal, the party would abstain, justifying the fact that Chega would not be the one to “prevent taxes from being lowered”.
A few days earlier, on Friday, the Chega leader had admitted to voting in favor of the government’s proposal if no other legislation more favorable to taxpayers could be passed.
Today, he explained that at the time “there was no other proposal, today there is another proposal”.
On Friday, the PSD/CDS-PP government approved a bill to reduce the marginal personal income tax rates of all brackets, with the exception of the 9th, which applies to annual taxable incomes above 81,199 euros. This proposal will be considered in parliament on Wednesday.
Chega proposes that incomes of up to one thousand euros should be exempt from IRS and that there should be a “readjustment of the brackets” to benefit those earning up to two thousand euros.
The PS proposal, on the other hand, maintains the rate for the 1st income bracket at 13%, but aims for a greater drop (between 0.5 and 1.0 percentage points) in the following three brackets.