The opposition Fidesz party said in response to Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s announcement regarding tax changes on Tuesday that the party does not support tax increases in any form.
In a statement, Fidesz said the Tisza government wanted to take money from the people because it had “squandered Hungary’s wealth through six months of inaction”. “Hungary does not need tax hikes, but tax cuts,” Fidesz said, adding that every tax increase risked job losses, while every tax cut created new jobs.
“Fidesz does not support any tax increases, because we must protect, not jeopardise, the jobs of the Hungarian people,” the statement added.
Magyar announced on Facebook earlier on Tuesday that the government had decided on the details of the wealth tax, the extension of the itemised tax for small businesses (KATA) and on scrapping tax preferences for professional footballers and other athletes.
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Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon about the government’s measures, Fidesz MP Andre Paloc said that the tax increases and new taxes meant that Hungarian families would have less pay to take home, and jobs would become insecure or disappear altogether.
He also said that while the Tisza government talked about the growth in industrial figures, it failed to mention that this was merely the result of investments announced by the previous Orbán governments bringing results.
Prime Minister Peter Magyar said in response on Facebook that “it didn’t take long for the members of the ousted government to side with the billionaire oligarchs.” He added that the people in question “would undermine the renewed extension of the KATA scheme — which they themselves ruined — and the taxation of footballers earning tens of millions”.
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Apropos of nothing in particular, whatever happened to Tisza’s pledge to reduce the 27% sale tax, which they kept reiterating was “by far the highest in Europe”?
Great headline from the people who gave you the highest VAT tax in the world.
Allowing self-employed entrepreneurs to invoice business clients under KATA taxation is a huge tax relief for thousands of micro entrepreneurs and is sure to boost business innovations in Hungary. Back in 2022 when Fidesz banned self-employed KATA entrepreneurs to invoice business clients, minimum tax burden immediately doubled for most self-employed as they had to change taxation status. I know that for some of my quittance who do IT-stuff as self-employed, the tax burden literally tripled overnight as they had to change tax scheme.
Many smaller revenue entrepreneurs gave up on self-employment and went to work local factories due to sudden increase in taxation as they mainly invoiced business clients for their cleaning, small repairs, gardening etc. services when they were under KATA.
Fidesz does not support people having self-employed micro businesses. They wanted people to work in the factories of of their corrupt business friends for a petty salary. Thanks to Tisza, this will be reverted and Hungary becomes entrepreneur friendly again. Starting a business with KATA is a great low risk way to see if there is a demand for your business idea and then you can grow and change to ltd. or some other form business entity if you see that you your business works and you need to hire people etc.
Thank you for your analysis and insight, here, Dear Ostanus. Right-leaning parties, like Fidesz or the Republicans – in my country – often cloak their bad financial policies in lofty virtuous language, such as : ‘we won’t raise your taxes.’ Yet, at the same time their fiscal policies are often more damaging than a so-called ‘tax raise’.