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Paraguay's Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Calls for Spending Cuts and Tax Review Image: Nina Osorio
🇵🇾 Paraguay /Elections & Politics

Paraguay's Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Calls for Spending Cuts and Tax Review

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • Paraguay's Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Meza, advocates for tax reform and spending cuts, diverging from President Santiago Peña's no-tax-increase policy.
  • Meza argues that higher taxes are necessary to fund citizen demands for improved education and healthcare, but insists this must be coupled with better public spending and reduced government waste.
  • He calls for a national agreement based on improving public spending, eliminating superfluous costs, and reviewing the current tax base, emphasizing the need to address informality.

Hugo Meza, the vice president of Paraguay's Chamber of Deputies, has publicly diverged from President Santiago Peña's commitment to not raise taxes. Meza argues that Paraguay needs a tax reform to meet the increasingly high expectations of its citizens for services like education and healthcare, which he believes Paraguayans deserve.

With this same tax base, that will be impossible.

— Hugo MezaExplaining the need for tax reform to meet citizen demands for better services.

"With this same tax base, that will be impossible," Meza stated, emphasizing that the current tax structure is insufficient to fund the desired improvements. He pointed to demands for an "education like in Finland" and "health like in the European Union" as examples of the high standards citizens now expect.

education like in Finland

— Hugo MezaDescribing the high expectations citizens have for the education system.

However, Meza stressed that any tax reform must be part of a broader national agreement. This agreement, he explained, should focus on three key pillars: improving public spending, cutting "superfluous" and unnecessary expenses, particularly within the political class by eliminating "privileges that irritate the citizenry," and then reviewing the tax base. He specifically mentioned the "Triple 10" tax structure (10% on VAT, Corporate Income Tax, and Personal Income Tax) as needing revision after more than 20 years.

health like in the European Union

— Hugo MezaDescribing the high expectations citizens have for the healthcare system.

Meza also highlighted the importance of addressing tax evasion and informality, stating that the goal is not to tax existing payers more but to expand the tax base. He believes that without these three components, improved spending, reduced waste, and a reformed tax system that includes tackling informality, the government lacks the moral authority to seek a national pact.

Why are you going to put your hand in our pocket again, the state, if there is bad public spending?

— Hugo MezaQuestioning the justification for increasing taxes without improving public expenditure.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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