The coordinator of the Left Bloc (BE), Mariana Mortágua, today accused the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro (PSD), of fabricating “an artifice” regarding the reduction of the IRS and said that “the government is taking Portugal for a fool”.
“Luís Montenegro fabricated a ruse and stood by while everyone was fooled or deceived by the news in the papers. Luís Montenegro made fools of the journalists, the MPs. The government is making fools of Portugal,” said Mariana Mortágua, speaking at a BE rally in Lisbon.
Entitled “April is in the Street!”, the BE rally was held in connection with the European elections on June 9 and was attended by around two hundred people.
Without making any statements to journalists, the BE coordinator addressed the government’s program [PSD/CDS-PP] in her speech at the end of the rally, criticizing the approach of modernity, progress and the future as “three buzzwords”, in which one of the measures is to “reduce IRC on profits from 21 to 15%”.
“If we lower taxes on profits, there is more investment and the economy grows,” was, according to Mariana Mortágua, one of the premises of the government’s program.
“Throughout the campaign, during the inauguration, after the discussion of the government’s program, the Prime Minister and the PSD countered this measure to reduce corporate income tax, in a millionaire way for those who make millionaire profits, with a supposed reduction in personal income tax by 1.5 billion euros. Newspapers were covered with this promise. Television reports were made with this promise and we now know that this promise was false, that the supposed reform of the IRS doesn’t amount to 200 million euros,” he said.
The BE coordinator also said that, of all Montenegro’s promises, “the only ones to take seriously are those that the employers’ confederation has put in the government program, they are the only ones that matter, they are the only ones to keep”.
At issue is the reduction in personal income tax set out in the government’s program. In an interview with RTP on Friday, Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento clarified that the 1.5 billion euros announced by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro actually represent around 200 million euros, since they will not be added to the more than 1.3 billion euros of tax relief included in the State Budget for 2024 and already in force.
