The second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, closed this Thursday the conference “The pending tax reform”, organized by her party, Sumar, and assured “we are very far from the other part of the coalition Government, the PSOE.” , because “he does not want a comprehensive tax reform.”
Díaz assures that Spain needs to increase public income, but that “it is not about lowering or raising taxes, but about who pays them.” The vice president recalled that Spain has a fiscal contribution gap (the weight of taxes and contributions in relation to GDP) of close to five points with respect to the EU.
This tax contribution remained somewhat below 37% in 2023 in Spain, which leaves a space of “80,000 million to address the tax reform that our country has pending since the Transition”, according to the Minister of Labor.
This Tuesday, in the Fiscal and Structural Plan that requires the new EU fiscal rules for each EU country, the Government committed to the European Commission to carry out an “additional” fiscal (tax) reform to reduce the deficit (the imbalance between public income and expenditure)“. Although the document provides practically no details.
In the same vein as the “additional tax reform”, this document includes the objective of “promoting the convergence” of our country’s tax collection to the EU average.
However, Yolanda Díaz stressed this Thursday that “we know that the PSOE does not want a reform following the white paper” for the reform of the collection system that they carried out just a few years ago on behalf of the previous coalition Government, and that has remained practically entirely in a drawer.
At the moment, the Government is negotiating the General State Budgets (PGE) for 2025. In the press conference after the Council of Ministers this Tuesday, the person in charge of the Economy portfolio, Carlos Corpo, has confirmed the transformation in permanent taxes from temporary levies on banking and energy companies It is part of that “tax reform” that is reflected in the document sent to Brussels.
Of course, for now, the Government has not been able to approve even the deficit path of the 2025 PGE, after Junts broke the investiture block in the Lower House in July. A parliamentary setback that has not prevented the preparation of the Fiscal and Structural Plan sent to the European Commission, but that does endanger the Budgets, after those for 2023 were already extended this year.
The document that the European Commission will evaluate during the next six weeks does not detail anything else about additional “tax reform”, although the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced in his speech at the beginning of the school year (at the beginning of September) his intention to raise taxes on the richest.
Most experts consider that tax reform is essential. Above all, as a necessary preliminary step if we also intend to address a reform of regional financing, as can be seen from the agreement between the PSC and ERC on the “singularity of Catalonia” that allowed Salvador Illa to be invested as president of the Generalitat, and that It could be extended to the entire State.
On the other hand, the opportunity appears inalienable to “improve the sufficiency of the tax system and to comply with the commitments of the European Union (EU). [de reducción de los desequilibrios presupuestarios y la deuda pública] without losing the train of progress, in the midst of a green and digital transition, which requires investment,” says Carlos Martín Urriza, spokesman for Economy and Finance for the Sumar parliamentary group in the Congress of Deputies.
The Fiscal and Structural Plan does take into account, as a measure already taken, the minimum rate of 15% for multinationals, which is the transposition of a European directive and which is being developed in Congress. From the Ministry of Finance they defend that the coalition governments have already made other important changes “following the premise that whoever has more should contribute.” As they list: “The solidarity tax for large fortunes and the increase in personal income tax for the highest incomes, such as those over 300,000 euros. Added to this are other measures such as the creation of the tax on certain digital services or the tax on financial transactions.”
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