Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday evening announced a cut in a so-called “solidarity tax” imposed by the previous leftist government on annual gross incomes exceeding 20,000 euros, a highly unpopular tax viewed as unfairly burdening the country’s middle and lower middle classes.
Mitsotakis also said a second reduction in another unpopular levy, the annual property tax (ENFIA), will also be applied in 2020, to the tune of 8 percent off the current rate, and in tandem with new objective tax criteria for real estate.
The right-center Greek leader announced the tax relief from Parliament’s podium, during debate on the 2020 draft state budget.
Mitsotakis, elected in large part on the back of pledges to reduce bruising tax rates against wage-earners and businesses alike, also promised an end to what he called “super-surpluses”, disapprovingly referring to the previous Tsipras government’s surpassing of even the ambitious – and punishing – annual primary budget surplus targets set by European creditors until 2022.
“Over the 2016-2019 period, more than 11.4 billion euros was drained from the economy, beyond the commitments agreed to with creditors. At the same time, however, arrears by taxpayers to the state increased by 18.1 billion euros. You (SYRIZA party) transformed austerity into a SYRIZA-like super-austerity. Behold, therefore, the type of accounting alchemy disastrously used to create SYRIZA’s so-called successes that the opposition refers to today… we will request and achieve a reduction in the surplus (targets),” he said.
