A deputy finance minister on Wednesday left open the possibility of the leftist-rightist government also trying to persuade creditors to allow it to avoid lowering an annual tax-free income threshold, as of 2020, amid stepped up efforts by Athens over the recent period to suspend a pending social security spending reduction in January 2019.
Speaking on the public broadcaster (ERT), Deputy Minister Katerina Papanatsiou said “we’ll also re-examine the tax-free ceiling … and we’ll consider the proper time when we’ll either remove it (austerity measure) or implement it. We’re referring to 2020, based on the fiscal results of 2019,” she said.
Papanatsiou essentially echoed the standing position expressed by the poll-trailing government after the official conclusion of the third bailout on Aug. 20, namely, that achieving and over-exceeding annual fiscal targets renders the upcoming austerity measures unnecessary and damaging to economic growth prospects.
Tsipras and his coalition government agreed with creditors in 2017 – a year after the third memorandum was signed – to again reduce social security spending on Jan. 1, 2019 and to lower the tax-free annual income threshold to below 6,000 euros on Jan. 1, 2020.
The latter measure is project to collect an additional 650 million euros for state coffers on an annual basis.
