Fico won’t scrap Slovakia’s business transaction tax in 2027

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico looks set to break yet another promise: the transaction tax on businesses, which he publicly vowed in late August to abolish from 1 January 2027, will most likely stay in force. That’s what the details of the 2027 state budget preparations suggest — the government must present the budget to parliament by 15 October at the latest.

A promise without a document

Back in late August, Fico wrote on social media that he had asked Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenický and his state secretary Radovan Majerský to prepare all the legislative and technical measures needed for a full repeal of the transaction tax. It was a clearly stated political promise.

But as early as 5 September, after a coalition council meeting, the prime minister signalled that a final decision hadn’t been made yet. MP Michelko described the shift even more bluntly: according to him, Fico effectively left it up to the finance minister to decide what to do with the tax, and the draft budget contains nothing suggesting it will be fully repealed.

What SNS is proposing

The SNS party counts it as a win that it managed to secure an exemption from the tax for sole traders. Now the party wants the same exemption extended to limited liability companies with turnover up to 100,000 euros (2.4 million crowns). At the same time, Michelko says the budget can’t afford to lose 200 million euros (4.9 billion crowns), which a full repeal of the tax would cost. Both SNS and the Hlas-SD party have long argued for extending the same exemption available to sole traders to small limited liability companies with revenue up to a hundred thousand euros.

The budget will settle everything by mid-October

Revenue from the transaction tax is expected to come in at around 500 million euros (12.1 billion crowns) this year. As MP Tibor Gašpar explained, the tax simply cannot be fully replaced by another revenue source: “It isn’t a tool capable of covering a shortfall in budget revenue,” he said.

It’s the 2027 draft budget itself that will show whether the tax survives in significantly altered form, or whether there’s at least a partial expansion of the exemptions SNS is demanding. One thing is already clear: the full repeal of the tax Fico promised in late August will not be in next year’s budget.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz