The planned changes in the tax and deduction system announced by Finance Minister Ivan Mikloš (SDKÚ) and Labour Minister Jozef Mihál (SaS) last week will be the focus of the meeting of the four party’s Coalition Council on Tuesday, August 24, the TASR newswire reported.
The joint press conference held by Mikloš and Mihál last week provoked criticism by junior coalition parties – the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) and Most-Híd – as neither Mikloš and Mihál, nor their parties, had discussed the proposed measures in advance with the junior partners in the coalition.
To prevent such problems in the future, KDH proposes introducing a rule to discuss measures at Coalition Council sessions first. According to KDH parliamentary whip Pavol Hrušovský, it is unacceptable that the coalition partners learned about planned measures from the media.
Mikloš and Mihál have proposed cancelling tax-exempt parts of the tax base for special-purpose personal savings, life insurance and additional pension savings. The tax-exempt part of the tax basis will remain in place only for so-called active income, which would make income from work more advantageous than income coming from capital. Another proposed measure aims to unify lump-sum allowances at a unified level of 30 percent in place of the three current levels of 25 percent, 40 percent and 60 percent.
Political analyst Juraj Marušiak last week told TASR that by omitting the two junior parties, he believed that SDKÚ and SaS violated the coalition agreement. Observers are also speculating whether the two ministers circumvented Prime Minister Iveta Radičová (SDKÚ) who was on holiday in Croatia at the time. They also said that her position in the government seems to be less solid than that of SDKÚ chairman and Foreign Affairs Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda who, after a decade as party chairman, has deeply-rooted allegiances with all the party's nominees.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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