Proposition 55K0448

Proposition de loi visant à réduire à 6 % la TVA sur l'électricité et le gaz.

General information ¶

Authors

PVDA | PTB Greet Daems, Raoul Hedebouw, Peter Mertens, Marco Van Hees

Submission date

Sept. 30, 2019

Official page

Visit

Status

Rejected

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

VAT poverty energy policy price of energy

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI Open Vld N-VA LDD MR

Voted to reject

PVDA | PTB VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Marc Goblet (PS | SP) voted to reject.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Nov. 19, 2020 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The VAT on gas and electricity is 21%. That is the rate of champagne and caviar. Everyone knows that in our country there are two rates on VAT, a rate on luxury goods, such as champagne and caviar, and a rate on basic goods. Our position has been very clear and clear for over ten years. Energy, especially electricity and gas, is not a luxury good, but a basic good. Our point of view is that one cannot go on in a society like today without electricity and gas. It can be done without caviar.

Today, people pay blue for electricity. A third of all single people in our country have difficulty paying their electricity bills. Half of all single-parent families have trouble with the electricity bill. Over 400,000 families live in energy poverty. Those people are afraid of the coming winter, a winter of loneliness, COVID-19 and expensive energy prices.

Anyone who takes his own energy invoice from the bus and opens the envelope knows that that energy invoice increasingly resembles a tax invoice. With the PVDA, we have collected 225,000 signatures to implement that VAT reduction. We have reached almost a quarter of a million people who say they find it priority and very logical that electricity is a basic good. I find it therefore incomprehensible that the people’s representatives in this half-course vote against the PVDA bill to reduce VAT to 6% just today, when the winter is coming. People are already facing wage loss and income loss. They are afraid of the covid problem. They need a clear signal from this Parliament today. They need oxygen, including in terms of the expensive energy prices.

The reduction of VAT on energy and electricity – I know you don’t like to hear this – was a theme of the election campaign before COVID-19. I have heard countless debates, including by people’s representatives, advocating a reduction in the price of energy. The SP has made it one of the focal points of the campaign. I have also had an enormous number of debates with the sp.a in which we said the same thing and in which the sp.a admitted that it is invaluable and that it is unlikely that it is still a luxury good. The sp.a promised that it would be a spearhead in the parliament. During the election campaign, the PS created a large program in which the VAT reduction was mentioned eight times. I could still assume that it was a mistake if the PS had mentioned this once in its program, but it is on pages 7, 32, 41, 150, 276, 399 and 504 of its electoral program. Then people take your promise seriously.

I do not understand why you now vote against the PVDA’s proposal to effectively translate your electoral promise into law. The question remains then whether eighteen months after the elections, after all those promises, the VAT reduction is more or less urgent. People are more in need of a VAT reduction because poverty has increased, because the fear of not being able to get around has increased.

I hear in this debate and in this hemisphere passionate debates and passionate interventions. We need to provide oxygen to the economy and society. But who wants to give oxygen to those who have trouble paying their energy bills? We will continue to drive our bill to demand 6% on energy, gas and electricity. It is especially unfortunate that this Parliament does not want to provide that oxygen to those who are in difficulty.