Sumar resumes his tax offensive against the leaders and senior officials of large companies and puts on the table for the negotiation of the budgets for 2025 an increase in the tax rates of capital income to personal income tax up to 30%, which would affect those returns. exceeding 120,000 euros. Concretely, the coalition partner wants to advance the maximum rate – now set at 300,000 euros – and increase its pressure. He is doing so at a key moment, when the Ministry of Finance is studying alternatives to promote tax increases for “those who have enough money in the bank to live 100 lives”, as revealed last week by the Prime Minister.
The proposal is not new, but it now has a better chance of success. Sánchez’s partners in La Moncloa have already tried to include the measure in the 2024 budget project that was shipwrecked due to the early elections in Catalonia. The party proposes to weave a network of gradual increases that would affect the upper sectionsfrom 120,000 euros. It will increase the tax rate on income between 200,000 and 300,000 euros by three points; and by two, those above 300,000 euros. Only three sections would be excluded from the reform. Income up to 6,000 euros would continue to be taxed at 19%, those between 6,000 and 50,000 euros, at 21%; and profits below 120,000 euros would be subject to a rate of 23%. Since 2020, the Executive has increased the highest tax brackets twice. The last time was last year.
“60% of the income of senior executives comes from capital income,” argued the economic spokesman of the Sumar parliamentary group in Congress, Carlos Martín Urriza, a few months ago. A thesis supported by the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, who has been preparing the ground for the measure to land for some time. The Minister of Labor has not stopped insisting that the remuneration of executives in large companies is up to “174 times” higher than that received by their employees. In addition, during the negotiation of previous budgets, he already defended that 85% of personal income tax collection comes from employee income and not from capital income.It should be remembered that within income tax, income from work is taxed at a maximum rate of over 40%; returns derived from capital gains are taxed at 28%.
To justify itself, the training takes as a reference the report on the remuneration of executives of listed companies published each year by the CNMV. It shows an increase of 5.48% in the remuneration of directors in 2023, compared to the previous year. In figures, a director of a listed company earned last year an average salary of 404,000 euros, this figure rises to 708,000 euros in Ibex 35 companies. According to the document, 32% of the total is received in variable terms, mainly in company shares.
The truth is that Spain is one of the countries in the European Union that imposes the highest tax on capital returns. Only six countries in the Community apply a maximum rate higher than 28%. Denmark, with a rate of 42%; Finland and France, with a rate of 34%; the Netherlands and Ireland, 33% and Sweden, 30%.
The PSOE and Sumar continue to negotiate the content of the budget project that the first vice-president, María Jesús Montero, will present to the Congress of Deputies. “We must respect the constitutional mandate, which says that those who have the most have the most to contribute,” insisted Díaz on Tuesday at the press conference after the Council of Ministers. The first vice-president revealed that they are preparing a tax proposal for the PSOE. “We are going to make a proposal that, I am sure, will find an agreement,” he added.
For its part, the socialist wing of the Executive is trying to lower expectations regarding the tax package that will accompany the 2025 Accounts. Treasury sources recall the battery of tax measures approved in the last three years and insist that they are together. imagine a tax reform. However, Vice President Montero acknowledged on Tuesday that in the coming months they would raise “another issue” in this regard.
However, Moncloa must first resolve several outstanding issues regarding fiscal policy. One of them is the possible permanence of extraordinary taxes on energy and banking companieswhich the government already tried to include in the unsuccessful budget project for 2024. “We made our way when energy companies made record profits thanks to the increase in electricity, and we did the same with the banking sector,” Montero said.
Other ways also to increase the pressure on the very wealthy, who continue to find ways to avoid taxes. In fact, 75% of Spanish fortunes above 30 million euros managed to evade the wealth tax in 2022, according to data published by the Tax Agency. Specifically, of the 852 people who declared assets above 30 million, only 235 ended up paying the tax thanks to the network of bonuses that the regions governed by the PP have woven in response to the approval of the wealth tax.
The Government estimates that in 2025 Tax revenues will increase by 6.5%The smooth running of the collection will be essential to achieve the path of stability that will bring the public deficit to 1.8% in 2025, and which will be submitted to the examination of the Congress of Deputies next week, with the unknown – still – if it will be approved.
