The Congress of Deputies supported last Thursday a lighter tax reform that will be accompanied by a new tax that will tax the interest and commission margin of entities operating in Spain. The measure took shape following PSOE pacts with Junts and PNV and later, with ERC, EH Bildu and PNV to prevent this amendment from falling to the Finance Commission. As a result, territories with regional systems (Basque Country and Navarre) They will have room to shape the bank rate, including the rate and bonuses.according to experts consulted by elEconomista.es.
The standard that will create this burden will have to go through the Senate process, where it will be definitively approved, before start a negotiation between the Treasury and the regional government in the joint committee on the economic agreement. In this instance, it will be necessary to reach an agreement on the partial or total nature of the support, even if the political agreements seem to go in this second direction, since the PNV claims to have carried out “consultation with the regulatory capacity”. In other words, Euskadi will be able to go as far as the central government allows in the new design of the fiscal framework, since what will be done and how it will be determined in this dialogue, according to sources from the department of María Jesús Montero.
“The fact that it becomes a tax makes it possible to agree, the special tax was called a non-tax benefit of the public domain, which did not make it possible to carry out this transfer to these communities,” explains the Professor of applied economics at the Pablo Olavide University of Seville and researcher at Fedea, Diego Martínez, to this newspaper. “Once this stage has been reached, the margins are relatively wide and depend on the balance of political power.” The Foral Community of Navarre will have to carry out another negotiation in parallel to agree on the tax in its regional regime.
There are general principles to which the Basque Country and Navarra are subject, like the rest of the autonomous communities, since they are governed by the organic law of financing of the autonomous communities. This process should therefore be guided by tax harmonization and coordination between territories. However, the limits are lax, so There is room for this political agreement.
In fact, the economist emphasizes that There are already other precedents. This territory applies a higher marginal rate in the latter sections of the personal income tax than the state and Navarra applies a maximum rate of 52%. The academic also discusses the case of Basque tax holidays, an economic measure with which the Basque Country tried to attract investments in the early 1990s with a gradual reduction in the corporate tax base and credit tax declared illegal in 2000. the European institutions, which resulted in a fine of 30 million euros payable by the Basque treasury.
Another law to change the concert
This negotiation will lead to a reform of the current economic agreement, which will also entail must be submitted to a vote by Parliament. “In the case of the Basque Country, the agreement includes the agreed taxes managed by Euskadi, but any new state tax requires a modification of the economic agreement through a specific law, agreed between the central government and the Basque government at within the joint commission of the economic agreement” details the professor of public finance at the Complutense University of Madrid and also researcher at Fedea, Jorge Onrubia Fernández.
An agreed tax becomes yours, because it is integrated into your tax system (which does not happen with VAT). “There will be regulation, management and use of the collection, they will be able to include the types or premiums they are considering,” summarizes the Professor of Applied Economics at Rey Juan Carlos University and Associate Researcher in Taxation at Funcas, Desiderio Romero. “This is already happening in the case of corporate tax, where they have their own tax,” he adds, while waiting to know the details of the agreement that the two governments conclude. Government sources specify that portfolios other than the Treasury could participate, even if it is the Treasury which will take the lead in the dialogue.
The transactional amendment of the PSOE and the Junts, put forward by this newspaper, established a range that goes from 1% to 7%, depending on the tax base, after left-wing groups imposed an increase in the highest rate. high, applicable from 3,000 million in exchange for the rescue of tax reform. The same article, already integrated into the standard, establishes that Everything that is collected will be transferred to the autonomy according to their GDPwhich will benefit Madrid, Catalonia or Andalusia.
This difference between the territories of the common regime and those of the regional regime, as well as the distribution to the LACC, have sounded the alarm bells in the banks. The sector has announced that it will file a complaint because it suspects nationalist groups of seeking to benefit certain companies. However, it is not yet possible to predict what they will be, since everything will depend on what is stipulated at the bipartite table. In technical jargon, nexus points are used to refer to matters where it is unclear whether or not they fall within provincial jurisdiction. Experts advance a complex debate by defining the criteria on the basis of which taxation It will be collected by the State or by the provincial treasury. (where they have their head office, offices or carry out their activity).
