It was always going to be difficult to sell flats during a natural catastrophe, but the nail in the coffin for the Czech Republic was the announcement by the Finance Minister Alena Schillerová that she would cancel the real estate tax. That meant that buyers would no longer have to pay the state 4 percent of what it paid the sellers of an apartment, so most decided to wait for the bill to pass. Except it hasn’t, and it’s not even clear at this point whether it will, since the minister (who’s from the ANO party) has been unable to convince her party’s coalition partners, the Social Democrats (ČSSD) to support the idea. “It’s a tax that never made sense to me,” said Schillerová. But that argument doesn’t seem to carry much weight with ČSSD. “For the Social Democrats I’d like to express a certain scepticism,” said the Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaoralek. “I’m not sure this is the sort of bill that’s such a burning issue that it should be part of the measures we’re talking about. We have many far more pressing matters, and I don’t think that this…is a group of residents that we need help.” The Labor and Social Affairs Minister Jana Maláčová said that with a recession around the corner, the government should instead be trying to help out young families who are having trouble making their mortgage payments.
