A petition submitted to the Chamber of Deputies on Monday 26 October 2015 has received 578 signatures of support in its demand for an amendment to the current law regarding the tax classification of widows and widowers.
Public petition n°575, created by Viviane Hansen-Adams, was opened on Friday 30 October 2015 and has since received nearly 600 signatures in its favour. The online document calls for a change to current Luxembourg law regarding the tax status of widows and widowers, which states that the spouse of the deceased have the right to tax class 2 for the first three years following the death, before they are reclassified to the 1A tax class after this period and are often subjected to around €300 tax payment increase.
In her petition, Ms. Hansen-Adams claimed that "this tax increase, surely beneficial for the State, nevertheless has negative effects on those who have lost their spouse", a demographic which she stated represents more than 5% of the Luxembourg population.
She continued by saying that widows and widowers are more likely than the rest of the population to fall under the poverty line, without taking into account the "grief, the suffering and then the exhaustion for those who, day and night, tended to their spouse suffering from an incurable disease" and that "after the death, the survivor is entirely dependent".
Ms. Hansen-Adams went on to say that "becoming widows or widowers is not a choice", citing the reclassification system as "unjust". She requested that the present process by abolished and the respective law amended, or alternatively that a new tax class or special allowances be created for widows and widowers.
The petition will be available to sign on the Chamber of Deputies website until Friday 11 December 2015. The petition will require 3,500 signatures before this date in order to be discussed in parliament.
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