Latest government idea to plug the budget deficit - 50% tax bracket

According to Puls Biznesu, the Finance Ministry public debt restructuring team, recently created by Finance Minister Grzegorz Kolodko, has proposed the introduction in 2004 of a new, 50% personal income tax bracket for the highest paid. The news, although not officially confirmed, has already sparked off hot protests from economists, who claim the initiative will actually do more harm than good. "Introducing the fourth tax bracket is a bad idea. There are countries in Europe which have higher tax brackets, but those societies are far better off. For the sake of long-term economic growth Poland needs to lift financial burdens, not increase them," said Dariusz Filar, chief economist of Pekao SA bank. "There is no evidence that an increase in the fiscal burden has ever resulted in the amelioration of a poor economic situation," added Adam Smith Center analyst Robert Gwiazdowski. (Puls Biznesu, pp. 1, 4) J.K.