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'Tax Freedom Day' comes later for Austria

The Local Austria
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'Tax Freedom Day' comes later for Austria
Austrians pay one of the highest rates of tax (Steuer) in the EU. Photo: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER

Tuesday 12th August is Tax Freedom Day in Austria - the first day of the year in which the average Austrian taxpayer no longer pays his or her entire income in the form of taxes, but instead keeps their earnings.

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It’s the day when the nation as a whole has theoretically earned enough income to fund its annual tax burden, according to a calculation by the Austrian Economic Centre (AEC).

The Socialist Party (SPÖ) and the liberal NEOS party have used the occasion to renew their calls for tax cuts.

Austrians are having to work for longer to achieve Tax Freedom Day. In 2013 it was calculated to be on July 31st, and in 2012 on July 28th.

However the Ministry of Finance has said the AEC’s analysis is “incomprehensible” and that according to its data Tax Freedom Day should have been in July. It calculates the tax rate in Austria as 43.8 percent.

The SPÖ’s finance spokesman Jan Krainer demanded tax relief for “those on small and medium incomes”. Millionaires were already “exclusively working for themselves” since March, he said.

NEOS economics spokesman Sepp Schellhorn stressed the need for reforms to subsidies, pensions and federalism. “It should not be the case that taxpayers work more than half a year for an oversized state apparatus,” he said.



 

 

 

 

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