“Programa Regressar” was initially presented as a brave new plan to lure back young emigrés who fled Portugal during the crisis years (click here). It has since morphed into a measure that could turn the country into a tax haven for millionaire footballers (click here). And now ‘constitutionalists’ are suggesting it might not even be… constitutional.
The problem with the measure that halves income tax dues for up to five years, and pays a share of relocation costs, is that it may well violate the principle of equality.
Jornal Económico takes it readers slowly through all the reasoning today, saying the programme is “above everything a fiscal benefit with the objective of incentivating a large part of the Portuguese who decided to leave the country during the year of the economic and financial crisis that led to the intervention of the IMF in Portugal.
“The government’s proposal excludes 50% of tax due on the earnings of people who become residents for tax purposes in Portugal between 2019 – 2020, as long as they haven’t lived in the country for the past three years, but did live there up to December 31, 2015”.
Now, for a start, critics – and emigrés working abroad – have said the measure as it was initially presented “could not possibly work”.
Salaries, conditions and job opportunities would all have to be vastly improved for the majority of Portuguese settled abroad to consider uprooting their lives (yet again) within the next couple of years.
Since then, tweaks have purportedly turned the programme on its head: to benefit instead of everyday citizens those who earn millionaire-salaries.
Says JE, experts in the Portuguese Constitution are all agreed: the plan goes against the fundamental principle that “all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law”.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
