Chega wants to maintain reduced VAT on energy equipment

Chega proposes the immediate reinstatement of the application of the reduced VAT rate to energy equipment, which ceased to apply on July 1st, and accuses the PSD/CDS-PP Government of applying a “tax on heat”.

According to a note sent to the media this Sunday, Chega submitted a bill to the Assembly of the Republic on this matter, which had also already been the subject of a legislative initiative by Livre with the same objective.

Chega proposes to revoke the rules of the State Budget for 2022 and the State Budget for 2023 according to which the application of the reduced VAT rate to a set of energy equipment ceases to be valid on June 30 of this year, so that the reduced rate is reinstated, with immediate effect.

In the explanatory statement of Chega's bill, which has as its first signatory the parliamentary leader, Pedro Pinto, this party holds the PSD/CDS-PP Government responsible for allowing this increase in VAT from 6% to 23% and considers that “this decision represents a direct fiscal blow to Portuguese families”.

For Chega, it is “a tax on heat”, applied in the middle of summer to “indispensable devices to guarantee decent living conditions” and not to “luxury goods”, which penalizes “especially the elderly, children and the sick”.

“The impact is immediate and severe: an average-priced air conditioner (650 euros) now costs more than 100 euros in additional tax. For many Portuguese families, this amount makes purchasing it simply impossible,” the party explains.

Chega also points out to the executive headed by Luís Montenegro a “conscious choice of easy collection, made without technical studies, without a serious impact assessment and without any plausible justification”, which translates into a breakdown in fiscal predictability and confidence.

“The Government not only penalizes those who want to invest in minimum air conditioning to ensure comfort, but also attacks the technological renovation of the housing stock itself. Instead of facilitating the replacement of obsolete and inefficient equipment, it makes it almost prohibitively expensive,” criticize the Chega deputies.

With the immediate reinstatement of the reduced rate of 6%, they state that “tax justice will be returned to families” when purchasing “air conditioning equipment, heat pumps and essential energy devices”.

Last Monday, Livre presented a bill with the same objective, to revoke the cessation of the reduced VAT rate on June 30th of this year, while the PS questioned the Minister of State and Finance, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, if this decision originated from any study.

Days earlier, the environmental association Zero considered that the planned increase in VAT applied to air conditioning equipment and photovoltaic panels constituted an “attack on climate policy” and that Portugal was moving in the opposite direction to the European Union.