Radical party would impose extra taxes on tech firms and the rich

The radical Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) party has sent a letter to the prime minister’s chief of staff calling on the government to withdraw its decision to restrict the cap on utility bills to average consumption levels, the party’s leader said on Friday.

Rather than the average people and families, it should be the “tech giants that don’t pay their share of the public burden” and the wealthiest Hungarians who should be made to pay more, Laszlo Toroczkai told a press conference in front of Parliament.

He said Mi Hazánk would impose a 15 percent “digital tax” on the net revenues of tech companies and a 30 percent “wealth tax” on the assets of the rich. “Such income gaps are unacceptable at a time when it will become impossible for hundreds of thousands of Hungarian workers to make ends meet and when certain people have an unfathomable amount of wealth,” he said.

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Toroczkai said those who use electricity to heat their homes or water their gardens were guaranteed to exceed average consumption and their electricity bill could be several hundred thousand forints.

He called the government’s decision and “anti-family measure”, arguing that it did not take into consideration the number of people in a single household or the size of the area they have to heat.

If the government does not withdraw the changes, Mi Hazánk will organise demonstrations on August 1 in the county seats.