Over 30 business organisations and think tanks appeal to the government: yes to a tax wedge reform, no to choking the middle class

Warsaw, 15^th April 2021

Over 30 business organisations and think tanks appeal to the government: yes to a tax wedge reform, no to choking the middle class

As many as 33 organisations signed an appeal to the government regarding the planned amendment of the labour taxation model. The authors of the document emphasised the necessity of a rational debate regarding the tax wedge and drew attention to the threats arising from some of the directions of changes that were postulated. Among the signatories of the appeal, there are five representative employers’ organisations, four think tanks, over a dozen industry organisations and numerous local employers’ organisations. The appeal was initiated by the Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers.

What prompted the development of the appeal were the announcements of tax changes to be included in “Nowy Ład” (“The New Order”), a strategic economic programme, the publication of which was postponed in March due to the pandemic. Among those announcements, there were an increase of the tax wedge for higher earners, along with a decrease for lower earners.

The signatories of the appeal see the need for a bold reform of the tax wedge in Poland, but stress the fact that the current model of relatively low wage taxation constituted a significant competitive advantage for our economy, and increasing the level of burden on the middle class may lead to an outflow of specialists, whose numbers are already insufficient, from the Polish labour market.

The full text of the appeal is presented below:
Organizations’ appeal on labour taxation