The PSD/Azores assured this Thursday that “the VAT reduction challenged by the PS” allowed for the return of “17 million euros to Azorean families”, accusing the socialists of insisting “on demagogic criticism” and the “cheap attack on the Government ”.
“The statements of deputy Carlos Silva on August 31, on behalf of the Regional Secretariat of the PS, clearly demonstrate the lack of care in data analysis, in the search for a reality that, in reality, does not exist”, underlines the deputy. -The president of the PSD/Azores parliamentary group, António Vasco Viveiros, quoted in a press release.
In the statement, the Social Democrats, who are part of the Government of the Azores (PSD/CDS-PP/PPM), highlight that “the VAT reduction challenged by the PS returned 17 million euros to Azorean families.”
According to António Vasco Viveiros, “if this Government had maintained the normal rate of VAT at 18% —as the PS intended— instead of the 203 million euros received in VAT until July 2022, this charge would be more than 220 million” .
In other words, 17 million euros were returned to Azorean families”, explains the Social Democratic deputy in the Azorean parliament.
António Vasco Viveiros points to the “inconsistency” of the PS, alleging that, when the regional coalition government “lowered the rates of all taxes (IRS, IRC and VAT) to the minimum legally possible”, it had “the opposition of the socialists and the argument that there would be serious consequences in the reduction of tax collection.
And “the same socialists now condemn the collection of taxes for being too high,” he criticizes.
“PS/Azores should make recommendations to its national government and not to the Government of the Azores, since, until July 2022 and at the national level, tax collection grew by around 21%. And that increase was only 4.9% in the region, as a reflection of the current tax reduction in the Azores”, maintains the vice president of the PSD caucus.
António Vasco Viveiros, quoted in the same press release, also mentions that, “in the shameful desire to show that the Government charges Azoreans too much ISP”, the PS “hastily concluded that the accumulated value of the collection of this tax up to July 2022 is higher than that charged in 2019”.
But it did so based on a mere lapse in the July 2019 Budget Execution Bulletin, which did not record the amount of ISP (Tax on Petroleum Products) collected in that month, but only in the following August, which is easily verifiable. with careful analysis,” he explains.
The PSD/Azores considers that the “PS conclusion is, after all, a fallacy” and, according to António Vasco Viveiros, “the socialist demagoguery does not stop here”, since it “compares the fuel prices of 2019 with 2022 , as if oil had not suffered brutal rises at the international level”.
The Azorean Social Democrats “subscribe” to the recent statements by the regional secretary of the Treasury, “when he says that in 2022 the collection of the ISP was lower than that of 2019, with much higher fuel prices.”
“In fact, until July 2022, about 2 million euros less than in the same period of 2019”, underlines António Vasco Viveiros.
The Azorean socialist leader Carlos Silva declared this Wednesday that, in taxes on fuels, until July the regional government “charged the Azoreans” 31.4 million euros, an additional three million euros compared to the same period in 2019.
Carlos Silva defended the need for the “Government to help Azorean families more, instead of worrying only about tax collection”, after safeguarding the “late and ineffective reaction of the Executive to the brutal increase in the prices of goods and essential services”.
The member of the PS/Azores Regional Secretariat, quoted in a press release, considered that the regional government “remains insensitive to the difficulties that families are experiencing, by trying to deceive the Azoreans with their usual ‘half-truths'”.
Proof of this are the recent statements by the regional secretary of the Treasury, who instead of mentioning the most recent budget execution data, from July 2022, and which were published by his office, chose to refer to the income collected through the Tax on Petroleum Products (ISP), from June 2022″, it says.
The Secretary of Finance of the Government of the Azores revealed on Tuesday that the region collected 27.3 million euros in the first half of the year through the Tax on Petroleum Products (ISP), an amount lower than that collected in the same period of 2019.
Source: Observadora
