“Misleading the Portuguese”, “one euro for every Portuguese”: Chega and IL criticize minimum fiscal shock (and there is a minister admitting “mistake”)

The revelation, by the Minister of State and Finance, that after all the fiscal shock announced by Luís Montenegro will only be around 200 million euros, has already provoked harsh criticism from the parties. After Pedro Nuno Santos spoke of a hoax, Chega and Liberal Initiative criticized the new prime minister for deceiving the Portuguese.

On SIC-Notícias, minister Castro Almeida said that it is about “doing what we said we were going to do”, but admitted a problem for the Government: “If we are here discussing this subject, it is because there is some communication error here, there may have been some ambiguity. But I would like to note that the person who clarifies it is the Minister of Finance himself, it is the Government that clarifies the matter the next day”. The Deputy Minister added that the calculations are being done and could reach “300, 400 million”, but that “they correspond to what was promised”.

However, nothing stopped the criticism. In a debate on CNN-Portugal, Chega’s parliamentary leader spoke of the “promises made in the electoral campaign, those that no one reads”, and was direct in the accusation: “There was an attempt to deceive the Portuguese”, said Pedro Pinto.

For the Liberal Initiative, deputy Rodrigo Saraiva did the math: with the proposal like this, “there is one euro for every Portuguese person”, he said, accusing the “PS and PSD” of having “little ambition”. And he challenged the new Government: “We need to lower taxes but forcefully, robustly”, so that it has an effect on income and, hence, on the economy.

In the same debate, for the PSD, deputy Hugo Carneiro was present, who tried to explain that “the numbers are being fine-tuned”, and that “we will soon see how they are reflected in the currently existing tables”. Carneiro guaranteed that “the retention tables” will be updated as soon as the measure is approved, adding that “people will have more money at the end of the month”.

On the socialist side was the former Deputy Secretary of State of António Costa, now a deputy. Reiterating Pedro Nuno’s accusations, Mendonça Mendes (who was Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs) recalled that “the AD promised during the campaign a reduction of 2 billion euros” in IRS. Social Democrat Hugo Carneiro responded that this amount also included the IRS discounts promised for “performance bonuses” from companies to workers. “That’s what we promised the Portuguese”.