The Greens, which are members of Austria’s ruling coalition government, say that the country cannot exit the coronavirus crisis without a significant contribution from wealthy Austrians, who will have to pay extra money into the state treasury in addition to current taxes.
Vice-Chancellor for the Greens, Werner Kogler, is now in the unenviable role of pioneering higher taxes for wealthy Austrians.
“Of course, when the time comes, millionaires will have to contribute. And it will be in this legislative period,” Kogler said in the Zeit im Bild 2 program of the Austrian television ORF.
The Greens have been pushing for higher taxation of the rich for a long time, but after joining the government with the conservative People’s Party led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, the Green party leadership said that such a measure needed preparation and its implementation is therefore a question of the future.
But now they claim that the rich will have to dig deeper into their wallets much earlier and that a proposal to change the legislation could probably be made in the fall.