Senate overwhelmingly votes to support introduction of 50% tax rate

The Finance Ministry tried to convince the senators that due to the new tax rate, budget's revenues might fall rather than increase as the highest earners would easily find loopholes to avoid paying this rate. Senators rejected this argument, with Senator Jerzy Markowicz (SLD) symbolizing the general feeling amongst his colleagues when he declared, "It is better to have 400,000 than 40 million potentially dissatisfied [citizens]." Now that the Senate has passed the bill it passes back to the Sejm for approval and this also means that there is practically no chance of withdrawal the proposed tax rate. "The road is closed," stated the Deputy Finance Minister Jarosław Neneman, "The president cannot "cut out" the 50% tax rate clause in the bill and it is difficult to expect that he will not sign the whole bill due to that reason." (Puls Biznesu, pp. 1,4; Parkiet, p. 8) E.B.