The Portuguese Left Bloc proposes the “Elon Musk tax” for fortunes of more than three million

MADRID 11 Nov. () –

The Portuguese Left Bloc party has proposed taxing fortunes of more than three million euros with a new rate that would be called “Elon Musk tax” in reference to the billionaire owner of Tesla, X or SpaceX.

The coordinator of the Left Bloc, Mariana Mortágua, presented the proposal this Monday at a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon and defended that with it the Portuguese tax system will be “fairer”, reports the Portuguese newspaper ‘Diário of News’.

Mortágua recalled that the three million euros is “the equivalent of 3,500 minimum wages” and argued that this figure should include all personal assets, including “furniture, financial holdings and crypto assets.”

“It is not a tax on the entire population, but a tax on the minority of minorities that owns the majority of the wealth and that contributes to an economy of inequalities. It is a small contribution,” he argued.

The rate would be 1.7 percent between three and five million euros and 2.1 percent between five and ten million euros. Above it would be 3.5 percent.

It would also include a tax on digital services companies with a turnover of more than 750 million euros “that use the data of each of us as users to sell and monetize through advertising.” The rate in this case would be 3 percent of income.

Mortágua has also criticized the “excessive and disproportionate weight” of indirect taxes such as VAT, a “regressive” tax, which affects the poorest people the most. For this reason, it proposes lowering the reduced rate from 6 to 5 percent and the average VAT rate from 13 to 12 percent.