Spain loses almost 10 billion euros per year in tax revenue due to the flight of companies and the rich to tax havens (called “tax havens” because of the fraudsters’ rhetoric). Around 9 billion due to the inability of the tax authorities to tax the profits that multinationals hide in the Caribbean and Atlantic islands, but also in the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland and Malta. And another 1,000 million in assets that our richest taxpayers divert to these same “black holes” in the Treasury.
A report from the Tax Justice Network places our country fifteenth in the world where revenue escapes the most. Their calculations result in a loss of nearly 500 billion euros worldwide and 175 billion in the European Union (EU).
In the middle of the G20 fiscal policy forum in Brazil, this Monday, the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, called for the creation of a global wealth tax. In the same spirit, in statements to the Guardian, the Spanish Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, urged the world’s leading countries to “be courageous” and redouble their efforts to reach agreement on a global minimum and “coordinated”. » for the world’s 3,000 billionaires, arguing that recent elections have shown that citizens demand a “redistribution of wealth”.
In July, as part of a historic consensus, the world’s largest economies agreed at the G20 to “cooperate” to design this tax on the super-rich. This Tuesday they will have to comment again on this tribute promoted by the Brazilian presidency and designed by the economist Gabriel Zucman, as this information explains.
“Government after government has dedicated itself to pandering to the interests of the richest people, slashing taxes and allowing their wealth to grow to unimaginable limits – more money than anyone else could never spend in his life. Heads of state and government at the Rio summit can end the decades-long attack on fairer taxation driven by the super-rich. Only then can we begin to heal the wounds of inequality that fragment our societies,” says Susana Ruiz, Head of Tax Justice at Oxfam.
This leadership of Sánchez and the International Tax Justice Corps faces difficulties within our borders to advance the transposition into Spanish law of the European directive on a minimum tax of 15% on the profits of multinationals. A measure that extends to 50 countries. But, above all, he is irritated by the difficulties encountered in meeting the coalition government’s commitment to create two new taxes on banks and energy companies which ensure the continuity of the temporary taxes designed in 2022 for their extraordinary benefits due to increase in taxes. interest rates and inflation crisis.
“The potential benefits of reforming international tax rules are enormous and would be shared by all,” recalls the Tax Justice Network report. “Taxes are our social superpower: perhaps the best tool we have to organize ourselves and live better, healthier and happier lives. “Cross-border tax abuse is the greatest obstacle to effective and progressive taxation that is essential to delivering on this promise, as well as finding a path to the level of financing needed to address the urgent climate crisis,” this document states. .
According to the analysis of this organization, “43% of these losses are due to the eight countries which continue to oppose a UN tax convention: Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand , South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. .Joined. These countries represent only 8.4% of the world’s population.
The findings are devastating. “The escalation of tax abuse by multinational corporations has not been stopped by the OECD’s seemingly endless reform efforts. And although this failure led some countries to cut corporate taxes, in the hope that this would protect them, the data now shows that this only added to the losses they suffered,” explains -he.
“The United States has long dominated the OECD, often blocking EU proposals from moving forward. But the United States was unable or unwilling to enact the resulting reforms itself and now has only one party in government. [el Republicano de Donald Trump] which has repeatedly threatened countries that would adopt OECD reforms (including the EU, on elements of the global minimum tax) and that would take alternative measures (like Canada, with the adoption of a tax on digital services in response to the lack of progress by the OECD),” continues the Tax Justice Network.
Where are the tax hiding places?
The British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda… are the tax havens most present in the collective imagination. However, the list of major countries complicit in multinational corporations’ failure to contribute as much as they should to corporate taxes includes almost all the major powers. Among them, Ireland, which “enters the top 10 for the first time”.
The Tax Justice Network is developing an index that assesses how much leeway a country’s laws and regulations offer in cases of tax abuse, and the result shows that the United Kingdom and its dependent territories (also known as the name of the British “second empire”) are responsible for 23% of global corporate tax losses. “The axis of tax evasion (the United Kingdom and its “second empire”, plus the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland) are jointly responsible for 33%. In total, OECD member countries and their dependencies represent more than 6 dollars out of 10 lost,” laments the report.
International “coordination” is essential for governments that really want fairer taxation. “The greater the coordination, the easier it will be to implement” the tax on the super-rich or the anticipated minimum tax on large companies, recognizes Corp, in statements reported by ‘The Guardian’. “This minimizes the costs of political capital,” he adds, in reference to the opposition that arises to these proposals from “monopolistic” sectors or with “dominant positions”, such as the banking sector or the energy in Spain. An opposition supported by the richest and right-wing parties, as Junts, the PNV and, of course, the Popular Party (PP) currently do.
The corporate tax gap between Spain and the eurozone
Corporate tax in Spain collected just over 35 billion in 2023. These revenues are still very far from their peak in 2007, when they reached almost 45 billion and represented 19% of all collections – an extraordinary year in reason for the real estate bubble. For the moment, this ratio remains at 12%.
Regarding GDP, corporate income tax represents 2.8%. A recent forecasting exercise by the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) indicates that this contribution from corporation tax will barely increase between 2023 and 2029, as the chart shows. The gap with the euro zone is 0.6 points of GDP, or almost 8 billion euros.
At the same time, “the positive accounting result [la medida tributaria de las ganancias, similar al ebitda o beneficio bruto de la contabilidad]” of all businesses in Spain is indeed at historic highs, having soared 110% since 2012. In the same period, corporate tax revenues have increased by just over half , or 63%.
The 15% minimum tax for multinationals, where applicable, is intended to cover the “tax havens” that large companies find. But the most progressive regret that the transposition of the community directive has not exceeded the rate of 15%, which they consider “very low”, and warn against the exemptions envisaged in the current text for certain “investments”. Along with tax hiding places, bonuses and compensation for losses from other years constitute precisely the biggest holes in corporate tax in our country.
