President Zeman will leave office in March. Photo credit: hrad.cz.
Prague, Nov 3 (CTK) – President Milos Zeman has vetoed the amendment to the 2022 state budget, on the grounds that revenues would be lower than if an amended income tax law had been passed first, he said in a letter to lower house chair Marketa Pekarova Adamova (TOP 09). His spokesman Jiri Ovcacek reported the president’s step today on the website of Zeman’s office.
“The reason for my veto is the fact that the budget revenues are lower than they could have been if an amendment to the income tax law had preceded the submitted amendment to the state budget for 2022,” Zeman wrote.
The budget is thus based on the lower individual income tax rate, which causes a loss of CZK 90 billion, he added.
Within the abolition of the super-gross wage, it was expected that the respective tax rate would return to the original level, and the bill authors included this public commitment in the justification of the bill, changing some tax legislation, Zeman argued.
The Chamber of Deputies voted to abolish the super-gross wage (the gross wage increased by the health and social insurance payments covered by employers) in 2020, when Andrej Babis’s government was in power. At the time, Babis promised Zeman that the law would be amended after two years.
On 18 October, the lower house passed an increase in the 2022 state budget deficit from CZK 280 to 375 billion. The government originally proposed a CZK 50 billion increase to CZK 330 billion, but MPs approved two other coalition proposals raising government expenditure and thus also the deficit by a further CZK 45 billion.
