In remarks to journalists after a meeting of the Confederation of Portuguese Business (CIP) in Lisbon, Rui Rocha stated that the Liberal Initiative (IL) holds a “vision of success” for both individuals and national businesses that differs from those of the two largest parties.
“We have a strategic divergence with the Socialist Party [PS] and a divergence in ambition with the AD,” he remarked, highlighting that the PS currently has “a view on reducing taxes with regard to the VAT on food products.”
“It is welcome that the PS currently has a proposal for tax reduction—fortunately, the times when the PS didn’t even consider that taxes should go down are behind us—but the IL’s vision is one where, given limited resources, the focus should be on areas and sectors that create wealth for the country,” he said.
The IL leader noted that the party’s priority in terms of taxes is to reduce them “on work that creates wealth for the country and on companies that generate wealth for the country, while promoting conditions to attract much-needed foreign investment for Portugal.”
Regarding the AD, Rui Rocha expressed a “divergence of ambition” because IL seeks “more relief for companies and families,” asserting that the “major difference lies in the capacity and ambition to reform the Portuguese State.”
“The tax reduction we want to bring to Portugal involves making the State more efficient by eliminating service duplications: services that do not serve people, but that serve the State itself,” he criticized.
Rocha stated that the party’s tax relief proposals would cost 6.2 billion euros over the legislative term and would include a reduction in corporate tax (IRC) to 15% and the creation of two income tax (IRS) brackets—arguing that “companies and families should not continue making successive efforts to support an inefficient machine.”
“This time, the State has to make a small effort, an effort of 1% per year on public expenditure, to relieve people, for us to have those conditions for success, for us to have young people with better salaries, […] to relieve the middle class, and for our companies to have capital available for investment,” he noted.
When asked about the criticisms from the PS leader, who argued that the IL’s program is unclear on where cuts would be made to offset the 6.2 billion in expenditure reductions, Rocha stated that his party’s measures are “clear in both values and purposes,” and redirected the question back to Pedro Nuno Santos.
“He has a tax reduction program through VAT, IUC. The options he made, which are not those of the IL, are worth about 1.7 billion euros per year. So, if this is applied from the first year, it amounts to 6.8 billion over four years,” he said.
Rocha suggested that questions should be posed to Pedro Nuno Santos on “how he justifies and where he plans to make cuts to implement these measures,” asserting that the IL’s program aims to achieve an economic growth of over 3% a year.
Before Rocha, the CIP president, Armindo Monteiro, addressed the journalists to criticize parties that oppose a reduction in corporate tax, expressing his “perplexity” over the lack of a “national consensus” on this issue.
“We have the highest rate in the OECD. When it is not possible to reduce two percentage points in a tax that is exaggerated, we ask what is the societal project that parties have? Because the corporate tax is a burden on businesses,” he said.
