In an effort to boost the native family over foreign immigrants, the government of President Viktor Orban is exempting all Hungarian mothers under the age of 30 from paying taxes.
The tax break, which will apply “regardless of whether [the mother is] married, single, or divorced” and last from the 12th week of pregnancy until the end of the year the mother turns 30, is said to have a “dual goal” of “promoting the births of children” and “leave[ing] more money with families”.
“According to the government’s calculations, tens of thousands of young mothers with an income could avail themselves of the possibility of tax exemption,” said Hungary’s Secretary of State for Family Policy, Agnes Hornung, of the new tax policy. “They are eligible not only for the new income tax exemption, but equally for all other forms of family support, including the family tax allowance, the baby expecting support [loan], and the child care fee”.
Orban has long raised concern that “fewer and fewer children are being born throughout Europe” and the fact that, for the most part, “the West [is] responding to this with immigration.”
“Hungarians see this in a different light. We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children”, Orban said in 2019, explaining that, to his mind, “immigration means surrender”.
In 2022, Orban noted: “There are countries in Western Europe like the German [left-liberal coalition] government that has just taken office and has written the following into its program: ‘Germany is an immigrant country.’ I’d rather cut off my own hand than write such a sentence into any government program”.
Hungarians were already exempted from paying income tax until they reach the age of 25. That law was initiated last year in an order from Orban to discourage emigration and help young people to feel they could consider starting a family without having to take a severe hit to their bank accounts.
“With most Western and particularly post-communist societies experiencing low birth rates, the consensus among governments of both the left and the supposed ‘center-right’ has been to try and replenish ageing communities and fill gaps in the labor market through ever-increasing mass legal immigration and a lax approach to controlling illegal immigration,” Breitbart’s Jack Montgomery noted in a January 2 analysis.
Hungary, a family friendly country
Though conceding the European continent faces a significant “demographic decline” and the undertow of a falling population, individual states can counter the “inevitability” through focused family friendly policies such as those being pursued in her Central European country.
“In Europe we face population decline, and imagine in the European Union there is not a single member state where the fertility is sufficient to maintain the population. In each and every member state it is below 2. It is as if we have lost our capacity to maintain our population. That is also the situation in Hungary with a population decline since 1981. Thus for three and one-half decades we have lost over ten percent of our population, approximately 850,000 people”.
In an interview with the WorldTribune, Minister Novak, the highest-ranking woman in the center-right Hungarian government speaks proudly as the mother of three children. She was visiting the UN for activities related to the Commission on the Status of Women.
Hungary’s population is below ten million. “At the lowest in 2011 the fertility rate was 1.23 now it’s 1.5“, said Novak, adding, “But you know what we inherited it is very hard to overcome. In Europe many leaders speak of migration, ‘Europe is the continent of empty cradles, so why not bring in migrants?’ But Hungarians are not ready to do this. When you ask young people, they say they want to get married and to have children”.
The European statistics agency Eurostat says that 1.58 remains the EU average fertility rate. In Germany the rate is 1.5, in Italy 1.35 and in Spain 1.3.
So what are the Budapest government’s goals? She stressed, “The goal is 2.1”. But when asked if this is too ambitious, she retorted, “If you start by Plan B, you will fail. You have to have ambitious goals so that you can really overcome this situation. We have made progress. In just six years the fertility rate has increased by 20 percent”.
Minister Novak concedes that Hungary aims at reaching the target through Family Friendly programs of financial aid and stressing the benefits of Family Life.
Significantly, she stressed that her government has earmarked 5 percent of GDP for a wide range of Family Policy initiatives. The spending is two times the OECD average. “This is not spending really but actually an investment in our Nation”, she added.
“We always talk about money. Of course, it is important how much we invest in Families through services. But let me say it is much more the joy of having children”, Novak extolled.
“Among the Hungarian people there is a consensus that we have to spend a lot of money on, invest really, in our future”. The main cornerstones are tax policy which favor allowances for children through creative subsidies.
Policies includes tax advantages for larger families, baby bonuses, and free school books. Family friendly employment policies favor mothers through insurance benefits and daycare. There are three years of paid parental leave as well.
Notably the government introduced a housing program offering a US$40,000 nonrefundable benefit for couples who are raising three children and intend to purchase or build a new property.
