“The taboo has been broken.” The sociologist described what the most watched move of the Fial government will bring

JIt’s a series of small measures that are very difficult to master. “Not even all the impacts are calculated,” criticizes the government’s consolidation package, PAQ Research sociologist Daniel Prokop. According to him, the plan to restore state finances will affect all people, but those who have become poorer in recent years will be significantly worse off. In addition, according to him, there are more and more households that do not have savings.

“We are making a tax package that is equal to all parts of society, and I think that is a mistake. We have forgotten what we have done for the past three years and what the effects of inflation are,” Prokop warns, adding that the government’s consolidation package should help poorer sections of the population more – and, according to him, this is not happening in its current version.

According to the sociologist, tax changes since 2020 have significantly helped high-income people. Conversely, households that are economically worse off have been hit hard by inflation.

“Roughly a third of households do not generate savings – that is, they spend their monthly income. And there are much more of them than two years ago,” explains Prokop, according to whom the government had a chance to “correct” the disproportion.

Daniel Prokop also sees a big problem in the fact that the package does not address important issues, such as the inequality between the taxation of employee work and self-employed work. However, he perceives certain positives in the area of ​​consumption taxes, including that on alcohol, as well as changes in real estate taxation. “We have a large taxation of labor and a small taxation of property. The government will test the higher property tax to see that it is not a taboo,” he says in an interview.

And he also comments on the fact that a number of households teetering on the edge of poverty do not have sufficient access to social benefits. It therefore welcomes the plan of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to reform them. “Benefits such as child benefit or housing benefit are currently drawn by around a quarter of people who are entitled to them. And it should be more automated so that you don’t have to declare so many things when you sign up. Hopefully it could increase the drawdown,” adds Prokop.

You can watch the entire interview in the introductory video or listen to it in your favorite podcast app.