Several hundred people protest in Vilnius against property tax

VILNIUS – Several hundred people gathered outside the Lithuanian parliament on Tuesday to once again express the public opinion about the property tax changes being discussed by lawmakers.

Around 300-400 people are cooking porridge, drinking tea and singing songs outside the Seimas.

"Our goal is to make sure that no housing is taxed, absolutely no housing… The government has backed off a little bit but those demands are not being fully met," Raimondas Simaitis, the head of the association Atoveiksmis, which organized the protest, told reporters.

"We have won a battle, but not yet the war," he told the audience later.

According to Simaitis, this is not a protest because "the authorities have listened" and have backed away from their plans to tax the first residential property.

Signatures are also being collected during the event in favor of an amendment to exclude all residential housing, garden buildings and their pertinent from the property tax.

Simaitis also organized a rally against the universal property tax in late April when over 4,000 people gathered in Cathedral Square in central Vilnius.

Having discussed the tax changes proposed by the government, the parliamentary Committee on Budget and Finance agreed on Monday not to tax first homes at all. This was agreed by the ruling coalition's council last week.

The government had proposed to allow municipalities to set the tax-free value of the first home and to apply rates ranging from 0.1 percent to 1 percent for anything above that. 

The final property tax model will be decided by the Seimas.