The system will neither be simpler nor fairer, and the tax burden will not decrease either, criticized party leader Beate Meinl-Reisinger in a press conference on Tuesday. Instead, your party calls for the abolition of cold progression, a drastic reduction in non-wage labor costs and effective CO2 pricing.
The NEOS are, among other things, about strengthening the middle class, and this will not be met by this tax reform. The finance minister acts as a highwayman, because he gets back 250 million euros per percentage point of inflation via the cold progression. Not to abolish this is a “bankruptcy declaration of the goal to finally create some real relief”, as Meinl-Reisinger said. The promise of Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) to also make a reform on the expenditure side has been completely broken.
For the young, the government’s announcement is very bad news. The 30 euro CO2 price is a declaration of bankruptcy, and the eco bonus is not fair because it is paid out regardless of income. With the 100 euros per year as a basis, driving almost 20,000 kilometers with diesel or gasoline would be subsidized by the state. The NEOS want a CO2 price of 350 euros per ton, but other price-effective taxes such as the mineral oil tax would be eliminated.
The fact that Vienna is also being disadvantaged here and that the ÖVP is deliberately playing city and country off against each other annoys Meinl-Reisinger: “I consider this division to be very, very, very problematic,” she said. At the same time, the model is nothing more than an admission of the failure of the governing parties to expand infrastructure over the past few decades.
NEOS budget spokeswoman Karin Doppelbauer also drew a devastating picture: “The government is a world champion in announcing, but a complete poor guy when it comes to implementation.” The promised tariff cut does not outweigh the cold progression of the past few years, the ÖVP promise to cut taxes will not be kept, and Finance Minister Gernot Blümel (ÖVP) has no idea how the reform should be financed.
