From the 2026 budget audit
Why does your SZJA pay for a fashion industry subsidy?
3.1 milliárd Ft directed at fashion and creative-industry firms — a sector the state has singled out for support, funded by every taxpayer including those who work in sectors the state did not select.
Roughly 786 Ft per taxpayer per year — 3,145 millió Ft total, for grants to a set of industries chosen by political officeholders rather than by any market test.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: fashion designers, creative agencies, and other firms in the favoured sectors receiving development grants. The unseen: the engineering firm, the tradesperson, the logistics operator — all of whom pay the taxes that fund a subsidy for industries the state preferred, while receiving no equivalent support for their own sector.
Objection
"Creative industries bring cultural value and export earnings — they deserve public support."
Answer
If fashion and creative firms generate cultural value and export earnings, consumers and international buyers will pay for it, and private investors will follow. The competitive market already prices that value. State grants to a favoured sector on top of that price signal distort the competition between the favoured and the unfavoured — every other industry that generates cultural value or export earnings without the subsidy is disadvantaged by it. A level competitive field, with the same tax treatment for every sector, is the honest alternative.
Share if you think the state shouldn't pick cultural winners with general tax revenue.
The analyst's verdict
Fashion and creative-industry business-development programmes
Rationale
A discretionary subsidy directed at firms in the fashion and creative industries. There is no economic feature of fashion or the creative industries that distinguishes them from any other sector competing for capital and customers on the open market — and so no basis for the state to single them out for support. This is a sector-specific discretionary allocation: the visible beneficiary is the set of fashion and creative firms that receive grants; the cost-bearer is every taxpayer, including the wage-earner whose own SZJA and SzocHo fund a transfer to an industry the state has decided to favour. The reform direction is a level competitive field — the same tax treatment, the same property protection, the same contract enforcement — for fashion firms and engineering firms alike.
Transition mechanism
Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle. No protected counterparties; grants are discretionary benefits, not contractual rights.
Affected groups
Fashion and creative-industry firms receiving current grants — a discretionary benefit, not a protected right.
Free Society Institute
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