Of the more than 94,000 million additional euros that Spain will receive from the European recovery fund, some 65,000 million in soft loans will be managed through 12 investment funds. One of them, according to the addendum to the plan published yesterday by the Government, will move 2,000 million in tax credits for companies in corporate tax. It is the so-called Tax Reform Fund, whose purpose is to promote tax deductions to encourage corporate investment in R&D.
One of the objectives of these funds is to focus on certain strategic sectors for the country’s economy. For this reason, part of the money will try to “avoid the fall in investment characteristic of previous crises and allow a strong increase in productive investment,” according to the text. For this reason, a good part of European loans is focused on decisive areas such as research and development.
“The Spanish R+D+i ecosystem (public and private) will be strengthened, with measures to attract and retain talent,” the addendum states. “A new tax reform fund will also be created to cover corporate tax credits aimed at encouraging business investment in R&D,” she adds.
It remains to be seen, say government sources, what will be the temporary distribution of these 2,000 million euros in deductions. The money must be committed before August 2023, although it may be executed within a period of three more years. For this reason, the safest thing is that this amount will be included year after year, until 2026, in the respective General State Budgets.
The figure, however, is not negligible. According to the chapter on tax benefits of the public accounts for 2023, the bonuses in Companies will be around 5,700 million euros. Of these, only 672 million will be linked to R+D+i. If distributed evenly between 2024 and 2026, the extra 2,000 million would allow these incentives to be doubled annually in Companies.
Together with the tax reform, the bulk of the money will be moved by the sustainable investment fund of the autonomous communities (20,000 million euros) and the ICO loans to support companies (15,000 million). The Social Inclusion Reform Fund and the Labor Reform Fund will move 9,000 and 5,000 million, respectively. To these amounts will be added, in parallel, the 26,300 million destined to strengthen the strategic projects for recovery, known as Perte.
In addition to tax incentives for investment, the plan contemplates other temporary reductions in tax charges. In this way, “it seeks to promote rehabilitation works to improve the energy efficiency of habitual residence and buildings for predominantly residential use through deductions in personal income tax.”
Additionally, adds the text of the addendum, reductions are foreseen for telecommunications operators related to spectrum to accelerate the deployment of 5G, improve taxation in the creation of startups and companies in the cultural sector, as well as to promote supplementary pension plans. Likewise, “subsidies from incentive programs linked to self-consumption and storage with renewable energy sources within the framework of the Recovery Plan aid are not included in the personal income tax base.”
The pension reform, in time and form
The addendum document presented yesterday, as several government sources already stated this week, insists that the Executive will approve in due time and form far-reaching reforms of the Recovery Plan, such as the second part of the pensions. This would imply reaching a consensus with the social agents before the end of the year. The reform, among other points, provides for updating the computation period for calculating the regulatory base and a new design of the intergenerational equity mechanism, but neither unions nor employers agree. “Following the scheduled schedule, the reforms that are in progress will be completed,” insists the addendum, citing the second phase of the pension reform as an example.
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