The PS will ask for an urgent debate to be scheduled in parliament on Wednesday with the Finance Minister on the IRS reduction, the Socialist parliamentary leader announced today, considering that “the whole country has been deceived”.
“This is so serious that the PS will immediately initiate an urgent debate to be held in the Portuguese Parliament next Wednesday, at which we are counting on the presence of the Minister of Finance, and we are sure that he will not shy away from providing all the clarifications that are well owed to the Portuguese and to parliament,” Alexandra Leitão told reporters at the PS national headquarters in Lisbon.
The PS leader considered that, in the last 24 hours, the country has witnessed “the unmasking of a hoax and a fraud led by the government”.
Claiming that the government had announced “a tax cut in the personal income tax of 1.5 billion euros”, the PS leader pointed out that it turned out that this reduction was a “mere 200 million euros”, consisting of “the difference between the 1.3 billion that had already been reduced since January 1st in the State Budget for 2024 by the PS government”.
“This is really a hoax, a sham and, for those who talk so much about loyalty and trust, this is proof of the lack of credibility of this government,” he accused.
Alexandra Leitão considered that the “hoax” is not “only about what was said in the Assembly of the Republic in the debate”, but also about what was promised throughout the election campaign by the Democratic Alliance (AD).
“Less than two weeks after I took office and a few hours after the government’s program was approved, we learned that everything that had been announced and promised to the Portuguese in the election campaign was, in fact, a fraud and a hoax,” he said.
For the PS parliamentary leader, “it seems that the PSD and AD have been promising what was already in the PS State Budget”.
“The government says the whole country got it wrong. Surely it can’t have been the whole country that got it wrong. It’s more victimization, bad faith on the part of this government. In fact, this government has to realize that it can’t fool ‘everyone, everyone, everyone’,” he said.
Asked about the statements made by the PSD’s parliamentary leader, Hugo Soares, who accused the PS of bad faith on this matter, Alexandra Leitão considered that this reaction was “quite ridiculous”.
“When we are witnessing a situation in which the whole country has been deceived, whether on purpose or not, by the government and the PSD, to turn things around in this way doesn’t deserve much more comment,” he said.
The PS parliamentary leader also considered that reducing this situation “to a communication problem is probably the biggest euphemism of recent times”, stressing that it is “clear that it is not a communication problem”.
“It’s clear that what the government tried to do was to convince the Portuguese that they were going to see a doubling of the IRS reduction. That’s clearly what happened. Whether they did it on purpose or not is irrelevant, because what we need is a government that the Portuguese trust and can believe in,” he said.
Leitão refused to accept that the executive had been ambiguous, pointing out that “they wanted to benefit from a deception they had created” and noting that the government only came to “deny it through the mouth of the finance minister when expressly asked about it”.
When asked if the PS would approve this reduction in personal income tax, given that it should only cost around 200 million, the parliamentary leader pointed out that “it’s clearly too early” for the party to take a position, given that the proposal is not yet known and that the government “surprises every hour”.
“What we’re focused on now is getting all the clarifications from the government, for the sake of trust and credibility. A government that is just starting its term in office is starting very, very badly, and is already breaking any relationship of trust with the country,” he said.
In an interview with RTP this Friday, the Finance Minister clarified that the 1.5 billion euros in personal income tax relief mentioned by the Prime Minister this Thursday, at the start of the debate on the government’s program, will not be added to the 1.3 billion euros in personal income tax relief included in the State Budget for 2024, which is around 200 million euros.
