Hungary has exempted young mothers from paying income tax as it continues to expand the package of pro-family formation policies it has introduced as an alternative to mass migration.
With most Western and particularly post-communist societies experiencing low birth rates, the consensus among governments of both the left and the supposed “centre-right” has been to try and replenish ageing communities and fill gaps in the labour market through ever-increasing mass legal immigration and a lax approach to controlling illegal immigration.
A small number of countries led by national conservative governments are pursuing an alternative, more long-term approach of supporting (and rewarding) their own citizens in forming families in an effort to boost natural population growth, however, including Poland and, most especially, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
Hungary is continuing to expand its family-friendly policies, despite straitened global economic circumstances, heading in 2023, by exempting women who become mothers before turning 30 from paying income tax.
“According to the government’s calculations, tens of thousands of young mothers with an income could avail themselves of the possibility of tax exemption,” explained Hungary’s Secretary of State for Family Policy, Ágnes Hornung, in a statement provided to Breitbart Europe on Sunday.
“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,” she added.
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”.
Young Hungarians were already exempted from paying income tax until they reach the age of 25 a year ago, in order to discourage emigration and help young people to feel they could consider starting a family without having to take a severe hit to their pockets.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has long lamented the fact 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,” he insisted in 2019, explaining that, to his mind, “immigration means surrender.”
“If we resign ourselves to the fact that we are unable to sustain ourselves even biologically, by doing so we admit that we are not important even for ourselves,” he explained.
He went significantly further in 2022, saying that, while Western and particularly Western European governments were welcome to try and solve their “population – or depopulation – problems” through “the import of immigrants”, he was dead set against attempting such a solution in Hungary, and would resist the continued efforts of the European Union and its supporters to foist it on his country through schemes such as compulsory migrant redistribution quotas.
“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 programme: ‘Germany is an immigrant country.’ I’d rather cut off my own hand than write such a sentence into any government programme,” he vowed.
Orbán indicated that he believes many Westerners stuck with pro-migration governments share his preference for a less diverse, more socially cohesive society later that year, telling an interviewer that he was “happy to welcome foreigners who like the way we think.”
“So can we say ‘Refugees Welcome’?” his interviewer asked, taking a jab at the Hungarian leader’s longstanding opposition to letting migrants cross his country’s southern border.
“Yes, exactly,” Orbán replied. “But from the West! Western Refugees Welcome!”
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