This afternoon, MS Karol Cariola, together with a cross-sectional group of opposition parliamentarians, entered a draft agreement calling on the President of the Republic to create a 2.5% estate tax on the super-rich, with the aim of creating an Emergency Basic Income that could benefit more than 4 million people for 6 months , this is due to the social crisis in the country due to the pandemic and the extension of quarantines.
The initiative’s driver, Mep, Mep, Karol Cariola, said that “unfortunately there is a sector of the population that is precisely those who have been out of work, who have had their wages reduced, who today have no minimum conditions to support a family group, those who have experienced the harshest consequences of the economic conditions that this pandemic has generated. It is a situation that we have to take charge of as a country, not only from the state, but also from those sectors that for so many years have accumulated large fortunes at the expense of the people of Chile, who have sustained with their work, with their efforts, the businesses that they maintain”.
Cariola, representative of the communes in the north-eastern area of the capital, added that the proposal “is an act of justice and that is why we have presented this draft resolution asking the President to listen once and for all the proposals that we have put on the table since the opposition”.
In the same vein, Mr Matías Walker (DC) supported the motion because “we find it essential to insist on the Basic Emergency Income proposal that we proposed as an opposition. I think time has given us the reason that it is absolutely counterproductive to deliver a figure as limited as the 65 thousand pesos per person (…) Given that the Government has pointed out that it does not have a greater fiscal space to supplement this measure, even though the former president of the Central Bank, former finance and economy ministers have pointed out that there is no room, I think it is very important to ask for an effort from the people with the highest assets in the country, who have fortunes , and to be able to make an additional effort at this very complex moment that we are living from a health and economic point of view.”
For his part, PC President Guillermo Teillier said that “it is a very clear proposal to obtain resources so that the state can go to the aid of many millions of people, men and women of our country, who are having a hard time. We hope that this time the President of the Republic will hear a voice of the opposition who is delivering a concrete proposal and that he will end this to demonize the opposition by saying that no proposals are made. This is a very comprehensive proposal that the president should take as quickly as possible.”
In addition to identifying in its account a list of the 10 highest stocks at the stock level in Chile and explaining the Chilean billionaires according to the Forbes ranking, in particular the document points to the creation of a tax of 2.5% “that severes financial and non-financial liquid assets of more than 10 million dollars, to allow the creation of an Emergency Basic Income for Chilean families , consisting of a monthly income of at least $420,000 for an average reference household of 3 people for the next 6 months.”
The initiative was introduced with the support of the deputies Manuel Monsalve (PS), Jaime Mulet (FRVS), Daniel Núñez (PC), Aléxis Sepúlveda (PR), Guillermo Teillier (PC), Matías Walker (DC), and Meps Andrea Parra (PPD), Catalina Pérez (RD), Gael Yeomans (PCS).
