To the shock of his acolytes, Pedro Passos Coelho has admitted that he is not a "perfect citizen" and that on occassion he may have been tardy in paying his social security contributions.
The Prime Minister said that he has never failed eventually to pay his debts, currently does not owe the taxman any money and that he has never used his political position to enrich himself - a thinly veiled smear on his predecessor who sits in jail on corruption and money laundering charges.
The press has been humming with the 'Passos Coelho social security debt' story and it seems that even though he has paid up over €5,000 owed in contributions and fines - some newspapaers point out that the correct amount should have been well over €8,000, he may still owe for the years 1999-2002.
The PM's recent payment for an original debt of €2,880 rose to €5,016 with costs and fines but the missing four year period seized on by the nation’s press appears not yet to have been demanded or paid.
The age of the debt does not mean that it has expired as social security debts remain until paid, unlike tax liabilities which expire due to age if payment has not been demanded by the state.
In 2007, over 107,000 taxpayers were notified of the existence of unpaid debts which many contested, even more taxpayers did not receive notification. It was then that Social Security decided not to insist on these payments as it's systems had been shown to be archaic and untrustworthy.
A Social Democrat spokesman said today that Passos Coelho "was not aware" of his obligation to pay social security. The period was when the current PM was self-employed, mostly as a consultant to Tecnoforma.
This is a wafer thin excuse as Passos Coelho would have had to present the Modelo B tax return and fill in Annex H, part 9 where is reads, "statutory contributions to Social Security."
None of this would have come to light had the PM's financial records remained securly within the state's computer systems but a leak to the press by persons as yet unknown has enabled Passos Coelho to be counted among those who have failed to run their financial lives according to the rule book.
An embarassed Tax Authority started disciplinary proceedings against 137 staff last year, all of whom are accused of accessing personal taxpayer data without any good reason. One of those snooped upon was Passos Coelho whose political antenna should have warned him that one day he would be caught out.
Passos Coelho supporters hit back at the Socialists today by claiming that the PS secretary general did not pay council tax or stamp duty when he was Minister of Justice between 1999 and 2002.
The socialist leader António Costa denies this allegation which comes hot on the heels of the Passos Coelho admission that he was rather behind with his socials security payments as nobody had sent him a bill.
Costa already has responded to the controversy and denied that he has ever been in trouble over "any amount of stamp duty or council tax."
The Passos Coleho team had managed to dig up an old report from a defunct journal Tal & Qual, published in 2000 or 2001 but Costa still denied any dues remain unpaid, “The denial then is as today: I neither owed any IMI or council tax."
The controversy broke as several PSD members posted details of the old news report onto their Facebook pages which provoked some less than polite comments.
Carlos Sá Carneiro’s Facebook page suggests the Socialists should not cast allegations about Passos Coelho after Sonia Fertuzinhos wrote that the socialist party "does not accept the explanations" given by Passos Coelho for his five missing years of social security contributions.
For the council tax and IMI story (in Portuguese)
