According to the large families association APFN, the government’s measure reveals “a total social insensitivity to large families and to the homes where the most people live”. APFN stresses that the measure “maintains injustice in relation to large families, even though [the government] claims otherwise”.
The Portuguese Association of Large Families (APFN) considers that the reduction in VAT on electricity with regard to large families is “totally unfair in its principles”, they say in a statement. For APFN, the solution would be to base the reduction of VAT on electricity on “per capita consumption” and not on “consumption of a house”.
According to the association, the government’s measure reveals “a total social insensitivity to large families and to the homes where the most people live”. APFN stresses that the measure “maintains injustice in relation to large families, even though [the government] claims otherwise”.
In the statement, APFN sets an example and explains: “a single person who wastes energy and consumes up to 100 Kwh (100Kwh month per person), has reduced VAT, but a family of 8 people who is very responsible in the use of energy and consumes 151 kwh (19 Kwh month per person) already pays the highest VAT ”.
On the other hand, the application of the measure only to those who have 6,9 KVA of contracted power is also especially penalizing for large families. For them it is impossible to have a low power contracted, due to their own family dynamics: they have a lot of clothes and dishes to wash and iron, a lot of people to feed and, with their father and mother working full time, they have to do all tasks simultaneously. Thus, all families that are in this situation are out of measure.
APFN states that “large families have been the most affected by the increase in electricity VAT since the beginning, so they should have been the first to have access to a decriminalizing measure. What we see, on the contrary, is that an inadequate regime is applied to them and they are relegated to March 2021 ”.
