FinMin Hatzidakis on tax bill in Parliament: We are reducing taxes, raising incomes; opposition comments

23:11 3/12/2024 - Πηγή: iEfimerida

The tax bill will be remembered as the draft law with 12 tax cuts and 12 wage rises, and will be signed by New Democracy, National Economy & Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis told Parliament on Monday,

during the bill's plenary debate.

The bill is titled "Measures for raising income, tax incentives for innovation and transformations of businesses, and other regulations".

In his address to the plenary, Hatzidakis noted that the bill implemented changes announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Thessaloniki International Fair in September to support citizens, but is also "a bill that further upgrades Greece's taxation legislation, building on what was achieved in previous years."

As he underlined, "It supports the change of Greece's productivity model in practical ways. It encourages innovation and the transformation of businesses through mergeres. It boosts the resilience of the Greek economy before the climate crisis. It further boosts public investments because it contains a second, supplementary budget which significantly raises the national segment of public investments to develop works of growth and cohesion."

The FinMin said that New Democracy's taxation policy is based on two pillars, the continuous reductions of taxes, and a comprehensive and continuous battle against tax evasion. "In both sectors, the government has provable results," he underlined.

Tax cuts

Hatzidakis referred extensively to 60 tax cuts introduced from 2019 to the present that brought higher revenues, and called on the opposition to stop "confusing taxes with revenues, becuase as it seems, with lower tax rates you can have higher revenues." Revenues have more than doubled since 2019 from the great tax cut on dividends, from 10% to 5%, he said, while the government the opposition has termed 'insensitive', has cut the introductory tax rate for lower incomes from 22% during SYRIZA's governance to 9%.

In addition, with the current bill, all tax cuts under the Mitsotakis government since 2019 total 72, "of which 23 are cuts in indirect taxes, because some here have the monopoly on indirect taxes, and of 23 of those cuts, 18 are VAT cuts, not simply by 2 points - but drops from 24% to 13%." The rate of indirect taxes dropped from 67% under SYRIZA to 62% under New Democracy, "therefore there is a fairer ratio, despite the fact it is not what we want."

Reducing tax evasion will bring in a total of 1.8 billion euros in 2024 over what was expected, of which 1 billion euros will come from stopping VAT tax evasion and 800 million from individual taxpayers, due to the e-tools available, Hatzidakis said. "No government from the restoration of democracy to the present has had such visible results in the fight against tax evasion," he underlined. The excess revenues were allocated to ministries for national and social policies, "proving that these funds are returning to society."

Opposition

PASOK-KINAL parliamentary representative Dimitris Mantzos rejected the minister's criticism of the opposition and called on the minister to accept two amendments it tabled on a special taxation of 5% on banks over their net profits for 2023 and 2024. In 2023 alone, banks showed net profits of over 5 billion euros, Mantzos said. The second amendment will support housing. Hatzidakis said he would wait to express his opinion on the bank taxation amendment after it was presented by the party's leader.

SYRIZA parliamentary representative Christos Yiannoulis said that the major issue the ministry and Hatzidakis should consider instead of bickering would be whether the measures "can manage the inflation monster you politically raised and tolerate, of profiteering and of the full social disintegration of workers and of budgets."

Other parties' representatives also spoke of favoritism to businesses, the taxation of banks, and accused the government of not taking adequate measures to help people manage inflation.

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