banking associations AEB and CECA reiterated their determination to take legal action against the new bank tax design that was approved today in Congress as part of tax reform.
The tax reform law received support from PSOE, SumarERC, Junts, Bildu, PNV, Podemos, BNG and Canarian Coalition; while PP, Vox and UPN voted against.
Shortly before the vote in Congress, the government reached an agreement with all its partners in the inauguration bloc to toughen bank tax by adding a new rate of 7%, one point more than what could not be approved last Monday, for financial entities whose interest and commission margin exceeds 5 billion euros.
This way the rate would be 1% up to 750 million3.5% up to 1,500 million, 4.8% up to 3 billion, 6% up to 5 billion and 7% from 5 billion.
Given this approval, AEB and CECAwho represent banks and former savings banks, expressed their “absolute rejection” of the tax because of its economic impact.
Serious effects of bank tax
They denounce in particular “legal insecurity” and the “serious economic consequences” of a tax created during a “chaotic and non-transparent process, behind the backs of citizens and without dialogue with the sector or evaluation of consultative bodies”, which, they believe, “must be included in all legislative procedures ” and particularly in an area “as sensitive” as taxation.
“All this generates general uncertainty and on the financial markets in particular,” they add.
The associations “frontally” reject the decision to incorporate a new tax on the banking sector because of its “serious effects” on the financing of families and businesses, on investment and on the economy as a whole, in a context of geopolitical risks and with strong financing needs in Spain and Europe and they claim that the new tax will subtract 50 billion in new financing from families and businesses.
“This tax has no equivalent in the countries of EUso it harms competitiveness of Spanish credit institutions and the economy as a whole, and lacks technical justification because monetary policy has entered a new cycle of falling interest rates,” they add.
They also criticize the fact that the measure represents the market fragmentation interior due to its different application between the autonomous communities and they also affirm that there is a “signaling” of a sector whose objective “is to work for economic growth and social progress”.
