The leader of the opposition has proposed new measures to “maintain the minimum balance and justice” with the Spanish medium and low incomes. From Guadalajara, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has asked President Pedro Sánchez recover the tax deduction in the purchase of a home habitual that eliminated the popular Mariano Rajoy in 2013, as well as creating a fund that helps average incomes to pay the mortgage.
“There is money to do it, legal capacity to implement it and it is essential,” warns the leader of the PP. In this way, on the one hand, it asks to return to the old tax deduction for the acquisition of a habitual residence, given that it is “essential that someone who has bought their first home and who has a mortgage be able to deduct income tax on what is paying for the loan. Later, in a tweet, he advocated that the proposal be “temporarily”.
We propose to temporarily resume the tax deduction for habitual residence, and create a fund that helps medium and low incomes with their mortgage.
The Government should worry less about helping those convicted of attacking the State and more about the citizens who build the State. pic.twitter.com/Q2G15zthdF
— Alberto Núñez Feijóo (@NunezFeijoo) November 3, 2022
Although Feijóo has added that this was the case until Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE arrived, this measure disappeared with the PP Government in 2013. It was at the beginning of 2011 when the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero chose to eliminate this aid, with strong criticism from the popular. Hence, Mariano Rajoy promised to recover this deduction in the electoral campaign.
And so it was, the former president of the PP Mariano Rajoy established this incentive when he arrived at La Moncloa at the end of 2011, retroactively from January 1 of that year and under the same conditions in which it had been applied until December 31, 2010. However, just six months later, due to the crisis and the design of a package of economic cuts, Rajoy definitively eliminated the deduction as of January 1, 2013.
Hence, the Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, has reacted, also via Twitter: “I don’t know if it’s insolvency or bad faith, but Feijóo lies when he says that the PSOE and Pedro Sánchez eliminated the personal income tax deduction for house purchase. It was the Government of Mariano Rajoy who, failing to comply with his electoral program, suppressed this deduction from 2013 “, he recalls.
On the other hand, the leader popular has proposed to create a fund with contributions from banks and government that helps measured and low incomes to face mortgages. “It would be a useful tool to deal with the increase in interest rates,” she insisted.
And, again, he has made reference to the negotiations between PSOE and Esquerra to lower the penalties for sedition, which led Feijóo and Sánchez to break bridges in their pact to renew the CGPJ just a week ago. The popular has asked President Sánchez to “help the people” instead of “condemned politicians”, in reference to the illegal referendum in Catalonia in 2017. “What most people want is for politics to set an example of compliance with sentences and not to commit crimes according to politicians.”
To the new initiatives aimed at helping the middle and low incomes, Feijóo has added those already proposed in recent months. Such as lowering personal income tax on income of less than 40,000 euros, temporarily reducing VAT on basic foodstuffs and extending the VAT reduction on electricity and gas until the end of winter. He has also warned of the “difficulties faced by self-employed workers due to the rise in energy prices and inflation”, such as bread makers, “who have to pay 60% more for flour, they cannot avail themselves of the VAT reduction on electricity and the Iberian exception is applied to them, which increases their electricity bill”.