For the parliamentary leader of the PCP, Paula Santos, the State Budget for 2026 (OE2026), presented this Thursday by the Government, “is a political instrument that reflects the political options of this Government“, which is based on “a political option of low wages, low pensions, destruction of public services, real estate speculation and favoring these big interests”.
According to the communist deputy’s analysis, OE2026 “aggravates tax injustices, not only with the reduction of IRC, but also with the maintenance of tax benefits, with an estimate of around 1,800 million euros”.
About IRC, the OE2026 proposal reportrecalls that “the Government presented to the Assembly of the Republic a request for legislative authorization with a view to continuing the reduction trajectory already started in 2025, with the change in the IRC rate from 21% to 20%. This proposal for legislative authorization aims to reduce the IRC rate to 17% in 2028 (with a reduction of 1 pp per year) and a rate of 15% for the first 50 thousand euros of profit of micro, small and medium-sized companies companies (SMEs) as early as 2026.”
The list of criticisms left by the PCP to the Government document also included the tax reduction relating to the “non-habitual residents” regime, which is estimated to be in the order of 1,900 million euros”, in addition to there being, according to Paula Santos, “transfers of public resources to public-private partnerships”, which “are 1,500 million euros”. In this case, the deputy insists, it involves transferring “around half of the National Health Service budget to private groupswho profit from the disease”.
From the PCP’s perspective, OE2026 still “encourages real estate speculation, privatizations, disposal of assets”, which makes this document a “budget that worsens inequalities and worsens injustices“.
As a corollary, the parliamentary leader of the PCP considered that this proposed law “not only does not solve the problems that workers and the people are faced with in our country, it also worsens them”.
“How is it possible, when in our country salaries and pensions are low, when emergency rooms are closed, when there are students who don’t have classes because there are a lack of teachers, when housing is increasingly expensive, it doesn’t bring an effective increase in salaries and pensions?”, asked the deputy rhetorically, while accusing the Government of showing that, “with this”, it doesn’t want to “know about these public problems”.
“We are focusing on the concrete problems that people face every day”, concluded Paula Santos, before attacking PS and Chega for following the Government in the document.
“A few weeks ago, trying to publish a technical document to facilitate its operation, whether with Chega or the Socialist Party, the truth is that Chega makes its options very clear and its convergence with these options on the part of the PSD and CDS Government”, highlighted the communist deputy, adding that the PS said “that it will be easier to approve the Budget. This also demonstrates not only its commitment, in fact, with all these options that are present and that will mean more difficulties in people’s lives.”
“This budget will deserve denunciation and combat regarding the options that are present here”, promised Paula Santos.