Protests against Hungarian tax reform grow – EURACTIV.com

Thousands protested in Budapest late on Wednesday after Hungary’s parliament swiftly passed a tax reform bill the day before, affecting hundreds of thousands of freelancers and business owners.

The Hungarian Parliament approved a bill amending a popular tax scheme for small business owners and the self-employed less than 24 hours after it was proposed, affecting some 450,000 Hungarian entrepreneurs who chose this form of taxation in 2021.

Basically, under the changes, those who pay their taxes under the new system can only receive income from individuals, which means that small business owners and self-employed people who do business with companies will no longer benefit. of the regime.

After smaller-scale spontaneous protests formed on Tuesday, thousands gathered in Kossuth Square outside Parliament on Wednesday evening.

The official protest, organized by the liberal opposition party Momentum, ended at 7 p.m., but a large group continued and blocked traffic elsewhere in the city.

Most of the crowd eventually gathered at the headquarters of the ruling Fidesz party, which was heavily guarded by police.

Gergely Kovács and Zsuzsanna Döme, the two co-chairmen of Hungary’s Farce Two-Tailed Dogs Party, were arrested and taken away in handcuffs by police for blocking traffic on the capital’s Erzsébet Bridge.