Poland waives tax for young employees to counter emigration

AP by Yahoo ^ | August 1, 2019

[NorseViking]

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland on Thursday scrapped its personal income tax for young employees earning less than $22,000 a year, as part of a drive to reverse a brain drain and demographic decline that's dimming the prospects of a country that is otherwise experiencing strong economic growth.

A new law by the right-wing government took effect Thursday, slashing the personal income tax from 18 percent to zero for workers under the age of 26 below the income threshold. It is expected to boost the earnings of nearly 2 million Poles at home, and the government hopes it will also persuade young Poles working abroad to return home.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently said he hoped it would "prevent a further loss, a bleeding of the population that is especially painful for a nation, a society, when it concerns the young generation."

[dfwgator]

Good move.

Poles need to come home and make Poland great.

[2banana]

High taxes = less young people and less people having children.

Just look at the US NE, Illinois and California.

[NorseViking]

Brexit would help much. Although they’d face competition with Ukrainian migrants back home.

[i_robot73]

How ‘bout just reduce govt OVERALL, so ‘high tide lifts ALL boats’ instead of just “some”??

Same ‘ol “Don’t pay me too much, I’ll lose my govt (taxpayer theft) bennies” mentality

[Mr Radical]

ping
I think we’ve debated before on whether the large numbers of Poles coming to work in Britain has had a negative effect on their home country?

[Cronos]

As someone who lived in the UK from 2000-2005 (so at the fag end covering the first year when Poland joined the EU and the start of the migration to the UK) and in Poland since 2010, here's my take

The migration was initially good for Poland - post communism, it couldn't compete with the West. It's industries were hopelessly outdated. it needed two decades to catch up mentally. They had 20% unemployment 2002-2006 and the price-relative-to-earnings between the UK and Poland was huge - the UK was cheaper that way.

So a million Poles upped and left. They learnt new skills, they brought a lot of GDP earnings to the UK.

now I don't see many young Poles heading to the UK as there are lots of opportunities in Warsaw, Wroclaw and Krakow.

Smaller cities like Radom and Lublin are dying, but that's to be expected

But many Poles learnt and then came back or brought their money back - the poor area in the south-east now is quite middle-class and Warsaw is looking very good.

Poles coming back now and post Brexit is a good thing - they are bringing industries back as well.

Overall I think it was good 2004-2018 for the brain drain to have happened especially as they are coming back. That's my opinion

[Cronos]

The current Polish government is nationalistic, socially conservative but is left-wing economically. it has 500 zl per month given for each child, it reduced the retirement age (or rather returned it) to 60 for women and 65 for men.

The state retirement fund is bankrupt - and it reduced the pension to about 1200 to 2400 zl per month -- you need 2400 to live

i personally vote for socially conservative, economically liberal party Prawica Rzeczpospolita and I support Janusz Korwin-Mikke who is a bit wackadoodle but I like his economic ideas and his idea to raise the voting age to 25

[NorseViking]

“” “” Overall I think it was good 2004-2018 for the brain drain to have happened especially as they are coming back. That’s my opinion””” “

My thought exactly.

[NorseViking]

I never understood that Soviet thing of age to collect social security which is lower for women. Especially since women live much longer in East Europe.

[Cronos]

I think women live longer than men everywhere in the world - it's biological - we men are physically stronger, on average bigger, with bigger muscles, more testosterone etc. because we are expected to fight, to be physically strong and to die protecting women. Women are more durable, more immune to diseases and live longer. Both have a role to play in society - an equal role, but different

And yes, the difference in retirement age is weird.

[Cronos]

though my wife does disagree with me - she’s a polka :)

[NorseViking]

She is not impartial:)