Chega accuses government of wanting to ‘confuse’ IRS, asks for new tables by August

This Friday, President Chegi asked the government to introduce new IRS tax withholding tables by August and accused the prime minister of wanting to “create confusion” on the issue by bringing it up in October budget talks.

“Mr Prime Minister, lower the IRS immediately,” André Ventura said at a press conference at CHEGA’s national headquarters in Lisbon, arguing that “the government urgently and fundamentally needs to do this” and that “there is no point in the government including withholding tables in the budget process.”

For President Chega, “the entry into force in August” of the new IRS tax withholding tables “is the only acceptable situation” after parliament approved a decree that reduces the rates of this tax to level 6 “to ensure that Portuguese people feel relief in their pockets this year.”

André Ventura said the IRS cuts that came into effect this year were something “already agreed upon and its cost was already foreseen” by the government itself, and stressed that “tax legislation is really the exclusive competence of parliament.”

“By not violating the law on brakes, the government has no political or legal grounds to avoid regulating it. By not doing so, the government is not obeying, it is not obeying the sovereign body that is parliament, and thereby violating the rules of the rule of law,” he said.

“The government does not have the opportunity to say whether it wants to do this or not, the government must do this. It must do this because this is the responsibility of parliament,” he stressed, adding that he hoped that “this will happen within the next two months.”

At this press conference, Andre Ventura announced that “Chega has submitted to Parliament a draft resolution which specifically “requests and recommends that the government update the IRS withholding tables this year to do so during these two months, July and August.”

He acknowledged, however, that the initiative would have no practical effect given the parliament’s recess until September, but framed it as “a signal from the Assembly of the Republic to the government that parliament is genuinely committed to keeping its rules empty rules.”

“The Assembly of the Republic cannot replace the government by adjusting the IRS withholding tables in August. The government can do it, the Ministry of Finance can do it and should do it,” he said.

According to André Ventura, the President of the Republic also “calls on the government to quickly resolve this situation.”

President Cegi accused Prime Minister Luis Montenegro and his government of “seeking to boycott the entry into force at all costs, especially the IRS cuts” and of creating the idea that the corresponding “budgetary consequences were not foreseen.”

“This promise to reduce the IRS was not only a campaign commitment on the part of AD and also Chegi, but it is already a budgetary one,” he countered.

In his view, the prime minister’s intention is to “carry this over to the October budget process,” “to create confusion in parliament, to create confusion in the country.”

“The government wants to make itself a victim, implying that some parties in parliament have approved very expensive measures that the government can now not pass or include in the budget,” and, on the other hand, “it wants to use this as a budgetary asset,” he argued.

The decree to reduce IRS rates to level 6, based on the PS project, was approved with the abstention of Chegi, votes for PS, IL, BE, PCP, Livre and PAN and votes against PSD and CDS-PP, and was made public by the President of the Republic on Tuesday.

In Angola, the Prime Minister did not specify whether the government would already change the income tax tables, and referred the issue to parliament, in particular to the PS and Chegu.