INESS

In its program statement, the government announced its intention to increase the progressivity of personal taxation. In the budget plan, it already speaks specifically of the intention to \"introduce 3rd and 4th personal income tax rates from 2025,\" which is expected to increase public revenues by EUR 78 million. A 3rd rate of 30% is to apply to annual personal income above EUR 80 000.

The EU recently adopted a directive to tackle the gender pay gap by introducing new bureaucratic obligations for employers. Similarly, the EU is pushing on other issues in the fight for gender equality, for example in the area of the low proportion of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, which reaches 33%. Consequently, women make up the same proportion (33%) of employees in technical sectors.

On April 30, 2024 - almost exactly one year later - INESS, in cooperation with the Austrian Economics Center, organized the popular Free Market Road Show - and again on a highly topical subject. This year marks not only the 20th anniversary of Slovakia\'s EU membership but also our 20 years in the European Single Market, which recently celebrated its 30th birthday.

On April 17, 2024, INESS organized a roundtable on the upcoming analysis of high infant mortality in Roma communities. After the presentation of the analysis prepared by Matej Bárta, the participants discussed various aspects of the issue. Our ongoing project, supported by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, aims to support and improve policies to reduce extremely high infant mortality with the help of educational change.

Yes, this comment is about European regulations. It started with curved cucumbers and today not a day goes by that I do not send a few swear words in the direction of the Belgian capital over some minor but all the more annoying interference in my life. Somewhere high above, noble intentions such as privacy, space for competitors, or less waste are floating around, but at the end of the day, Kafkaesque bizarreness falls out of it.

We all want higher wages for less work. This explains why the four-day working week is such a popular topic in the media. But it is even less of a justification for the emotions that run high when the subject is discussed. These, in turn, prevent rational argumentation and consideration of all the problems with this popular proposal.

A new regulatory avalanche is rolling in on entrepreneurs. The Ministry of Labour is about to implement the EU Gender Pay Directive. This introduces new bureaucratic obligations for entrepreneurs. They will have to inform about the criteria they apply when setting wages in the company and define the pay procedure so that the employee knows what he or she has to do to get higher pay.

Recently, a Slovakian newspaper published a commentary about tighter regulation in the healthcare sector. The question remains what exactly does he mean by the word \"tighter regulation\"?

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said at Davos that Slovakia could become a country that will experiment with a four-day working week. It is a flattering topic and so several media immediately picked up on it.

Slovakia\'s new government has finally succumbed to the Sweet Tax Temptation, as we called it in our last publication. The Ministry of Finance has published a preliminary announcement describing its intention to introduce the tax. You read that right; it is not the Ministry of Health that is in charge of the health of the population and the sustainability of health spending.