The great summertime tax-break lottery

There will be no summer holiday for the legions of lobbyists protecting billions of crowns in corporate tax breaks and deductions. ODS will spend the next few weeks looking for about Kč 20bn in budget cuts so that Vlastimil Tlustý can call off his dogs and vote to pass the tax reforms and the 2008 budget. The campaign against employer-subsidized meal tickets suggests that no tax breaks are safe. Tlustý's crusade for lower taxes might have started as an attack against PM Mirek Topolánek, as Pavel Páral of MFD and Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek suggested this week, but now Topolánek has cleverly joined the cause. Both Tlustý and Topolánek will win if a workable compromise is found, but Topolánek will shine the most by - yet again - extracting himself from a seemingly impossible situation. To do this, he's going to have to step down hard on some corporate toes. [Czech Republic taxation vouchers MF Dnes KDU-ČSL]