Finance minister: Next year’s budget geared towards families

Finance Minister Mihály Varga has said the 2020 budget will be geared towards families.

In an interview to public radio on Sunday, Varga said the government next week will submit to parliament a family-friendly budget with the aim of reversing the declining population.

The “family budget” will be helpful for families, people having children and teachers in numerous ways, providing security and support, he added.

Meanwhile, Varga said from next year, people in small localities will benefit from a measure that will enable them to recover invoiced VAT on renovations, extensions and construction of real estate of up to 5,000,000 forints (EUR 15,300). In practice, this means that, coupled with the government’s family home-renovation scheme (called Village CSOK), VAT on construction costs of around 30 million forints can be written off altogether.

On the business side, the minister said a big boon for companies with turnover of more than 100 million forints will be the elimination of the Dec. 20 deadline for tax payment. Full taxes will only be paid in May when tax returns are declared. Noting positive economic trends such as a budget shortfall of only 2.2 percent of GDP and 5.3 percent economic growth, he added that 150-170 billion forints of tax will be collected five months later than customary.

Varga noted that the social contribution tax will fall by 2 percentage points and the small business tax will decline from 13 percent to 12 percent.

On the topic of tax incentives, he said that not only large companies investing more than 500 million forints will have access to tax relief, but medium-sized enterprises generating 50-100 million forints of investments over three years would also qualify.

The minister said tax centralisation was at its peak in Hungary in 2010. A top priority for Visegrád Group countries is to continue decentralising, he said, adding that the government’s primary aim is to help businesses.

Source: MTI