PN Pledges to Scrap Inheritance and Succession Taxes

PN leader Alex Borg told supporters at a Birkirkara rally on Wednesday evening that a Nationalist Party government would abolish three categories of inheritance and succession tax, describing the measures as the first in a series of taxation proposals the party will announce in the coming days. Borg opened his address with the story of a young couple he met during his leadership campaign last summer. The woman had just lost her mother and was grieving, but the knowledge that she would soon face a bill of thousands of euros in taxes on the properties she stood to inherit made a hard moment harder. "Her parents worked for their whole lives to have property that they can leave to their children," Borg said, "but up until today, they have a challenge to receive the property because they must pay thousands of euros which create an even bigger challenge to their cost of living." That story anchored the PN leader's announcement of three distinct proposals. First, a PN government would abolish the Causa Mortis, the 5% stamp duty currently levied on the value of immovable property inherited from a deceased owner. Second, it would scrap the succession tax on family businesses, covering both shares and immovable property. Third, it would remove taxes on property donations between family members. Borg described all three measures as unprecedented and said they would affect everybody. "We are determined to implement these straight away, and not to wait until the eve of an election," he told the crowd. Borg framed the tax proposals as part of a broader economic programme. The PN has previously proposed a Mediterranean Fuel Hub to be developed off Hurd's Bank, which the party projects could generate up to €450 million over three years, and investments in data, artificial intelligence, the newspace sector, and the creative economy, projected by the party to yield €100 million over five years. Both sets of figures are PN party claims and have not been independently verified. "We aren't going to promise to spend without telling you how we will first make money," Borg said. "First, we have shown you how we will make money, and now we will show you how we will invest it in you." The Fuel Hub became a flashpoint earlier that day. Prime Minister Robert Abela alleged, in Borg's characterisation of the remarks, that the individual behind the proposal is Malta's biggest fuel smuggler. No direct Abela quote was supplied, and the individual was not named. Borg rejected the allegation as baseless and irresponsible. He stated that the Malta Maritime Forum endorsed the Fuel Hub proposal on the same day as the rally and said Abela's intervention would not undermine it. "He thinks that by making this statement he would break our proposal," Borg said, "a proposal built by the best minds in the sector and which the Malta Maritime Forum endorsed today and said that this is what the sector needs." Borg challenged Abela to act on his claim: "Go to the police and file a report, because I have nothing to be afraid of." Borg also drew a broader contrast with thirteen years of Labour government. "The country knows what happened in the last 13 years when we had ministers consulting with criminals," he said. "You can put your minds at rest that I will not consult criminals. I will consult the Maltese and Gozitan people." He closed his address by acknowledging the party's position in the contest: "We are the underdogs, but with you we are a real force and a real party." Further tax revision announcements, Borg said, would begin the following day.