Of the 90,000 businesssed who joined the Special Program for Reducing State Debt (PERES), 10,000 had debts considered to be uncollectible, as they had no assets or income that enabled the tax authority to recover debts.
This number was reported to parliament on Tuesday by the Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs at a hearing on the impact to the State of tax forgiveness programmes and the extraordinary revaluation of assets by companies.
Rocha Andrade did not reveal the total amounts of debts considered to be uncollectible but he did say that of the 90,000 applicants to the debt forgiveness programme, who owed the tax office or social security, two thirds were small companies.
Of the remaining one third, Communist Party and Left Bloc MPs questioning the use of the PERES programme by large companies, a question that Rocha Andrade found "curious” as these measures were not intended for, nor had been used by large companies - which seems not to have been the case.
Data sent to parliament by the Ministry of Finance shows that €168.4 million in interest, costs and fines has been forgiven to companies on PERES and of the €1,455 million in the scheme, just over €400 million will be paid withing 12 months of the agreement.
Andrade said that had the forgiveness regime not been in place, the State may have lost out on the entire debt.
In reply to the Left Bloc’s Mariana Mortágua, Rocha Andrade agreed that extraordinary debt repayment schemes are not fair as there are inherent injustices, so they should not be used frequently.
Andrade also said that the schemes need to be universal as to limit them to a particular business sector would invite charges of State support.
The Left Bloc claimed that a company owning, for example, €1 million will let it run until, sooner or later, there is a debt forgiveness scheme in place.
This is what Ricardo Salgado and other millionaires did when bringing in funds from offshore bank accounts. They waited until there was a fines and interest amnesty: indeed, Salgado, even when head of the Banco Espírito Santo Group, said he deliberately had waited for such a truce before bringing money into Portugal.
