FACUA-Consumers in Action has criticized the “absolute passivity” of the Government and, specifically, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, given the price increases in numerous food with reduced VAT that have occurred since the measure came into force in January of last year.
Thus, they warn that the measure ends this December 31 without the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food having developed the controls it announced nor the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 having opened “no sanctioning file” despite the complaints presented by FACUA.
The VAT reduction on food ends in 2025
Precisely, starting tomorrow, January 1, 2025, products that have VAT at 2% they will go to 4%so olive oils, milk, bread, eggs, cheese, fruits, vegetables, legumes, tubers, cereals and flour will be affected.
For its part, the VAT on pasta and seed oils will rise from 7.5% to 10%. In addition, FACUA recalls that since last October 1, 2024, foods that had been with VAT at 0% rose to 2%, and those that had it at 5% went to 7.5%.
For this reason, the entity has monitored the commodity prices of food products affected in the Alcampo, Carrefour, Dia, Eroski, Hipercor and Mercadona supermarket chains, with the aim of verifying whether only the tax increase is passed on to them or if there are larger increases.
In that sense, the olive oil It will once again be one of the products where consumers will notice the most this increase in VAT, which will go from 2 to 4%. The increase will be 13 cents on bottles of a liter of white label extra virgin, which are currently sold for 6.74 euros in Carrefour and Alcampo, 6.75 euros in Mercadona, Dia, and Eroski, while in Hipercor it is 6.89 euros.
Other examples are the eggs, fruits, vegetables and greenswhich will go from 2 to 4% on January 1, while a mesh of five kilos of potatoes costs 5.95 euros on average in supermarkets today, the increase in this tax from 2 to 4% will mean an increase of 12 cents in this product.
FACUA calls the VAT reduction “ineffective and insufficient”
FACUA qualifies the VAT reduction on basic foods as “ineffective and insufficient measure” for consumers, because, although the standard has represented “tiny” price drops In products that in many cases had been experiencing huge increases, the “inefficiency” of the tax reduction has been greater due to the lack of controls on large distribution chains to enforce the prohibition on increasing margins.
The association rejected the measure from the beginning, which, they explain, has been of “little use” to alleviate the enormous increase in the price of the shopping basket.
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