Carlos Moedas’s proposal to exempt young people up to the age of 35 who buy houses of up to 250,000 euros in the city of the IMT did not convince the opposition and, according to what the Observer has been able to learn, the proposal should even be lead with opposition votes against. The currency executive estimated a saving of about 8,322 euros in taxes for the purchase of homes in the city, but the opposition considers the proposal insufficient.
The Socialist Party, which will present a alternative proposal, a municipal rental subsidy —at an equivalent cost—, considers that “it is a bad time” to move forward with the IMT exemption since “it focuses the public response on mortgage loans when interest rates are and will be increasingly higher” and that it is ” socially unfair”. for benefiting “the tiny minority of young people who have 25,000 euros for the initial entry required by the banks.”
The PS wants the municipality to subsidize the rent for young people, guaranteeing “affordable housing for more than a thousand young people.” The objective is to support those who rent “homes on the free market for up to 450 euros per home”: “In this way, rents will never exceed 30% of the net income of young tenants – the same rate of effort and current rent brackets in CML Affordable Income.”
For the Observer, the Bloco de Esquerda also criticizes the socialists whom it accuses of “making the Moneda budget viable without forcing the right to negotiate the city’s problems.” “The alternative proposal of the PS on the exemption of the IMT is important and shows that there was room for other convergences of the left for the right to housing, in a budget in which Coins abandons the Affordable Rent Program, closing the doors to the classes stockings”, says Councilor Beatriz Gomes Dias, who adds that the blockers will also present a “modification to the PS proposal to make it broader and more complete and not to forget the university students who cannot find accommodation in Lisbon because of the Local Accommodations and the digital nomads.
The PCP considers that the “free IMT to promote access to housing for the youngest is a joke???????? “The beneficiaries of this measure, as well as the beneficiaries of the IRS refund, are the same as always: families and young people from families with higher incomes, the richest, because they are the only ones who can buy houses at the same price. level that Lisbon offers”, criticize the communists who equate Carlos Moedas’ IMT exemption proposal with the reduction of the IRS rate charged by the municipality.
“The free IMT, like the free SRI, is a clear transfer of public resources to the richest wallets, penalizing the municipality’s budget without solving the housing problem,” they tell the Observer.
Livre, which will support the alternative proposal presented by the Socialists, assures that Carlos Coins’ proposal “is totally out of step with the reality of housing in Lisbon.”
“Houses of up to 250,000 euros in Lisbon are increasingly rare, and house prices are rising non-stop. On the other hand, according to a recent study by the FFMS, the majority of young people in Portugal receive less than 767 euros per month and very few will be able to access credit approval, which would mean income of around 50 thousand euros” , stresses the party to the The observer adds that the measure that the opposition will fail only “contributes to a housing policy that supports the middle class.”
Source: Observadora
