Municipalities: Pink Call for More Tax Autonomy

The NEOS aim to give the "starting signal for the reorganization of federalism" at their member assembly tomorrow. According to the smallest governing party's vision, municipalities should receive more tax autonomy by being directly allocated a portion of the income tax. A corresponding key proposal will be decided on Saturday. The NEOS want to transfer personnel competence in education to the federal government and organize health in health regions.

Health and Education

With this, the NEOS clearly reject the recently discussed proposal by Salzburg's governor Karoline Edtstadler (ÖVP) to transfer all health agendas to the federal government's competence and give the states competence for the education sector. The goal is to finance health from a single source at the level of health regions, as in the Dutch model, according to the pink key proposal. In contrast, the federal government should receive full personnel competence and schools should be granted extensive school autonomy - pedagogically, personnel-wise, and financially.

The proposal for a new "municipality-centered" federalism with more tax and levy autonomy for municipalities also comes at the expense of the federal states. According to this, municipalities should be able to set their own levy rate on their income tax share within a federal corridor. The total amount of income tax should remain at most the same. The collection should be carried out by the tax office and not by new administrative personnel. "We are giving municipalities much more responsibility," explained Vice Party Leader Claudia Gamon for the proposal: "Because if one hand spends the money and the other collects it, it is not efficient. Those who shape should also be allowed to finance."

Cooperations and Mergers

Additionally, the NEOS want to make cooperation and mergers of municipalities simpler and more attractive. As an incentive, support should be provided in the course of the next financial equalization for the implementation of digitization or cooperation projects that demonstrably save bureaucracy and administrative costs.

Subsidies

Double and triple subsidies should be abolished through a cumulation principle, meaning the federal government should credit subsidies from other entities, according to another demand. State governments should no longer be able to grant additional subsidies if the state does not have legislative or executive competence. To increase competition among energy supply companies, mutual public sector participations between these companies should be dissolved and political influence on them should be ended.

NEOS Member Assembly

The main motion is to be decided on Saturday at the NEOS member assembly in the balloon hall of the Arsenal in the third district of Vienna. There is no election for the chairperson.

(APA/Red)

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.