Matovič’s tax revolution according to towns and villages will hurt more than it will help – SME.sk

BRATISLAVA. The Association of Towns and Municipalities of Slovakia (ZMOS) rejects in principle the concept of the tax revolution presented on Sunday by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Igor Matovic (OĽANO).

The association thinks that the proposed financing of increasing contributions for families with children will extremely hurt the economy of local governments and will have a negative effect on the quality and scope of services, their availability and serviceability of the territory. Michal Kaliňák, the director of the association’s office, informed about ZMOS’s position on Monday.

What ZMOS suggests

The association criticizes in particular that one of the financing solutions should be a lower growth of share taxes, which belong to local governments. Cities and municipalities would thus be cut by EUR 200 million a year. According to ZMOS, this would limit their basic functions and tasks.

“And it will also significantly limit the scope of social policy, support for culture, regional education and the development of local economic policy. In other words, the state will do more harm than good with this decision,” Kaliňák said.

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ZMOS emphasized that if the state is really interested in supporting families and children, it should, for example, increase the subsidy for the construction of rental housing, which, despite the government’s declaration to support rental housing, is insufficient in the draft state budget at 20 million euros.

Another proposal of ZMOS is the improvement of public services by using Eurofunds. “For example, for the improvement of schools, the development of social services, for the sewerage of many towns and villages, for measures aimed at addressing the negative effects of the climate, addressing the availability of food in more than 102 food deserts and the like,” Kaliňák said.

Kaliňák: It’s not appropriate or correct

On the contrary, Slovakia has more than half of the current funds under the current period and could have drawn new Eurofunds for 11 months if it had already approved the new Slovakia Operational Program in the European Commission.

“ZMOS is convinced that at the time of preparation of the budgets of towns and municipalities for next year and in the turbulent period we are currently living, the presented considerations about financing selected parts of public policies are not appropriate or correct,” Kaliňák reminded.

He added that the association therefore called for the adoption of measures by which local governments will gain economic and legislative stability, because their level of credibility compared to the state proves that the municipality can extremely effectively and appropriately address many life situations of each population group.