Estonia's planned security tax will not land next year
The ruling coalition sees a national security tax as one possible way to help pay for increased defense spending. But the tax is still in the idea phase at this point and will not be laid down next year.
Laying down a national defense or security tax was discussed as one way to boost budget revenue during a meeting of the sides to the government last week.
Erkki Keldo, head of the Reform Party's Riigikogu group, explained that when it took office, the government decided to boost Estonia's defense spending from 2 percent of GDP to 3 percent.
"Looking at wider national defense, we are talking about €500 million a year in the broad strokes. How to raise that in a maximally broad-based manner is something the coalition has been trying to answer for a long time," Keldo said.
While the Social Democratic Party (SDE) talked about a national defense tax before elections, it was decided not to levy such a tax after the coalition of the Reform Party, Social Democrats and Eesti 200 was formed.
SDE leader, Minister of the Interior Lauri Läänemets said that a defense or security tax would be concrete and universally understandable.
"I do not believe it is sensible to create a lot of smaller new taxes. Just as it would be insensible to pull resources from education and research. It would be much more prudent to admit that we have invested in national defense and that we now need to pay for it," Läänemets suggested.
Erkki Keldo said that a debate is in order for whether to lay down a defense or security tax and how big it should be.
"We cannot tax national defense as such. Talking about a new tax, it should be as broad-based as possible. It should be paid by everyone, and we can talk about two types of such taxes. One is taxation of income and the other of consumption or turnover," the Reform Party whip said.
He added that no such tax will be laid down in 2025.
Head of the opposition Isamaa party Urmas Reinsalu does not support the new tax as the government has already introduced tax hikes and has others in the pipeline.
"I believe these [existing things] should be critically revised. We should have clarity in terms of what a functional fiscal strategy looks like. But the government has wasted several months it should have spent on cutting public sector spending," he noted.
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Editor: Merili Nael, Marcus Turovski
Source: "Aktuaalne kaamera"
