The PSOE has reached an agreement with Junts and the PNV to make the special tax on banks permanent but at the same time knock down the tax on electricity companies. A pact that does not have the support of Sumar, which has registered its own amendments in Congress to try to reach an agreement in the parliamentary process and also include the energy companies, which the nationalists want to leave out. Without the votes of their partner in the Government, the socialists would have to turn to the PP to carry out this pact.
This Wednesday the deadline for amendments for the transposition of a European directive on corporate tax ended. A text on which there is general agreement among the Government’s partners because it proposes raising the rate to 15%, in line with the European Union average. But the Executive sought to also include in this bill the debate on special taxation for energy companies and banking, and to do so it wanted to present a series of amendments negotiated within the coalition.
The PSOE has finally closed an initial agreement with the PNV and Junts that leaves out the energy companies from which Sumar has distanced itself. The plurinational group has registered a battery of amendments to try to maintain conversations during the parliamentary process. Coalition sources remember that the PSOE does not have a majority to reach this agreement if they do not include the energy companies. In fact, EH Bildu and ERC have also registered their own amendments to make both taxes permanent.
The Government promoted a special tax in 2022, temporarily, in response to the extraordinary benefits due to the inflation crisis and the interest rate increases of the European Central Bank (ECB). This measure is in force until December 31. For the investiture agreement, Sumar negotiated that this fiscal tool would become permanent and wanted to take advantage of the conversations already underway for the General State Budgets (PGE) to force the PSOE to fulfill that commitment.
But in recent weeks, the socialist part of the Government has begun to distance itself from the idea of making this tax permanent. If the Executive “does not have a sufficient majority, it will not be able to fulfill the vocation that taxes on energy companies and banks remain over time,” said the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, a few days ago.
“The Government’s vocation is to give it continuity, but the Government is also very aware that it has to agree on it with all the political groups, who have to approve it,” he said last Thursday in statements to a group of journalists. There are specifically two groups that are objecting in this regard: Junts and PNV. And in Sumar they understand that part of the socialists’ reluctance is related to the need to seek the support of Basque and Catalan nationalists for the PGE.
Recently, in an article in La Vanguardia with the title Industry or populismthe CEO of Repsol, Josu Jon Imaz, assured that special taxes on banks and energy companies were “populist measures” within a strategy of “lack of social recognition of the value of the company, regulatory overlaps, the suffocation of industry, prohibitions instead of incentives and suffocating fiscal measures that penalize the generation of wealth and employment” that, “under the mantra of social welfare, seriously compromise the future model of this country.”
At Sumar they remember the impact on revenue that these two levies have had. Special taxes on banking and energy companies raised 2,859 million in 2024 (corresponding to fiscal year 2023). A tax that has not affected Repsol’s performance: in 2022, the oil company obtained the largest profit in its history, 4,251 million, while in 2023, profits were the third best, 3,168 million euros. On the other hand, as part of its pressure strategy, the company has also threatened to take investments outside of Spain.
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