Costa highlights ″various fiscal measures″ in housing in response to Marcelo

The Prime Minister endorsed this Tuesday the decree that creates support for the payment of rents and installments of housing credits, refers in a note in which it is emphasized that these are the first measures of the “More Housing Program”.

In the same note, the executive leader’s office notes that the “Programa + Housing” has been under public discussion since February 16 and “contains several fiscal measures that the Government will submit to the Assembly of the Republic”.

In the text, it is even emphasized that, under the terms of the Constitution, Parliament “has exclusive competence to legislate on this matter, with a view to creating tax incentives for affordable renting, reducing IRS taxation for landlords and relieving of the VAT rate for the construction and rehabilitation of properties intended for leasing, among other tax incentives”.

Today, at the beginning of the evening, the President of the Republic announced that he had enacted the Government decree-law that creates support for rents and housing credits, considering that they are “necessary and urgent measures”, but “regretting that they are not more extensive” .

This position of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and the enactment decision are contained in a note published on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic on the Internet.

“As these are necessary and urgent measures to support families, in view of the worsening economic and social situation, while regretting that they are no longer extended, namely through taxation, to cover other equally very difficult situations, the President of the Republic promulgated the government diploma that creates extraordinary support for families for the payment of house rent or the provision of mortgage credit contracts”, reads the note.

On Thursday, the head of state had promised to decide urgently on the first measures of the government’s housing package in the form of a decree-law: “If they are urgent, arriving in Belém, they will naturally be decided, namely enacted urgently”.

The decree-law enacted today, approved by the Council of Ministers on Thursday, creates an extraordinary support called “Income Support” and an extraordinary support for the accelerated rise in mortgage loans embodied in the “Interest Bonus”.

According to the communiqué of that meeting of the Council of Ministers, the “Income support” is intended for renters with effort rates above 35%, with income up to the maximum limit of the 6th step of the IRS and contracts signed and registered with the Tax Authority until March 15, 2023, will be paid by Social Security, with retroactive effect to January 2023, and may amount to 200 euros per month.

The “Interest Subsidy” takes the form of a temporary interest subsidy and is intended for borrowers of credit contracts for the acquisition or construction of permanent own housing, and aims to respond to the rapid variation of the reference index, with an impact on one of the main family budget charges.

On Monday, on a visit to CMTV’s facilities, the President of the Republic considered that the Government’s housing package, in global terms, “as it is designed, right from the start, is inoperable, whether from the point of departure or at the point of arrival”.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa globally equated the package of measures announced by the Government – many of them still to be approved by the Council of Ministers – to the “so-called poster laws”, which “appear to proclaim certain more pamphleteer programmatic principles, but the idea is not exactly that they pass to practice, no, it is that bills and posters remain”.