Science minister denies tensions with Puig over tax reform: ‘We are clearly allied’

Valencia, September 30 (European press) –

Science and Innovation Minister Diana Morante “totally” denied that “there was any kind of tension or annoyance” with the chief of the public, Zimmo Puig, for his announcement of tax reform. Indeed, he asserted, “we are clearly allied with progressive governments such as the Puig government.”

Morant, in statements to the media in Gandia (Valencia), was asked whether there were tensions in Moncloa with Puig and she replied in this regard: “Not at all.” From this point of view, he noted that the reform announced by the executive authority yesterday follows “the same roadmap of not exempting taxes on large wealth, but, on the contrary, helping those who have little.”

Thus, he stressed that both reforms seek to “achieve a fair distribution of the tax burden out of the crisis” that does not require a “large and generalized reduction” because they avoid the reduction that it would mean in the welfare state. He stressed that “the money does not come from nowhere, but from taxes to be able to cover the needs of the welfare state.”

Morant noted, in connection with the fact that the tax credit proposed by the government is less than that announced by Puig, that they operate under “different” powers. In addition, he stressed that the financial model of the executive branch, of which only a few brushstrokes have been made, “has not yet closed.”

For this reason, regarding a possible extension of the tax cut, he commented that “it is open to negotiation, dialogue and consideration” as well as to EU recommendations that “go precisely along those lines to avoid being put in place”. In this regard, he noted, Puig “would have done the math” so that his proposal would not imply a reduction in this welfare state.

Morant claimed that he “does a lot of pedagogy” because “what is collected through taxes translates into a social model of welfare”. He warned that “when we downplay the importance of the tax reform debate and say the solution is tax cuts, what’s behind it are cuts.”

CUTS, the only recipe for PP

In this context, he criticized that the People’s Party “knows only how to propose a recipe: cuts in the welfare state and in the rights of citizens and the more modest, middle and working classes.” For this reason, he stressed, the new government solidarity tax seeks to compensate for the abolition of the inheritance tax imposed in some PP communities because “it can’t be that billionaires don’t contribute anything to the crisis.”

On the other hand, he emphasized that the Sanchez government “would not do, as the People’s Party did, is leave the middle and working class at the bottom, but distribute more equitably and progressively so that those who have less will earn more. And those who have more will make more of an effort to get out.” from this crisis.