Former President of the Republic Cavaco Silva said this Thursday that he does not have enough information about the “degree of fiscal illusion and fiscal anesthesia” of the state budget for 2024, refusing to comment on the document.
Before the presentation of lawyer and former PSD leader António Pinto Leite’s book, There Is No Life Free, Aníbal Cavaco Silva was asked about the government’s budget proposal for next year, presented on Tuesday.
“You know very well that I am not a budget commentator and, moreover, I do not have sufficient information about the degree of illusion and fiscal anesthesia that is present in this budget and in its public presentation. So I can’t tell you anything. about this,” he said.
Asked whether there is an illusion in this budget, the former prime minister and SDP leader reiterated that “the concepts of financial illusion and financial anesthesia are very important when analyzing the public presentation of the budget.”
Cavaco Silva explained that these concepts come from the early 20th century Italian scholar Amilcare Puviani, who considered them necessary for analyzing budget presentation.
“They always come to mind because in my doctoral dissertation I did an in-depth study of illusions and fiscal anesthesia,” he said.
According to an article by the President of the Council of Public Finance, Nazaré da Costa Cabral, who quotes the Italian scholar cited by Cavaco, “a fiscal illusion occurs when government revenues and associated financial efforts are not immediately accepted by taxpayers, which encourages, on the part of the government of the sector in question, an increase government expenditures covered by the same revenues.”
Other academic articles have equated the concept of financial illusion with the concept of “taxpayer tax anesthesia, which exists when taxpayers have a distorted view of the relationship between the taxes they actually pay and the taxes they think they pay.”
The book by António Pinto Leite is presented by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and is attended by former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, former Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas, former Minister of the Socialist Government Pedro Siza Vieira, State Councilor and former CDS-PP leader António Lobo Xavier or the Christian Democrats’ current “deputy” Paulo Nuncio.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Sandra Hansen, a news website Author and Reporter for 24 News Reporters. I have over 7 years of experience in the journalism field, with an extensive background in politics and political science. My passion is to tell stories that are important to people around the globe and to engage readers with compelling content.