The Government has until 5 p.m. this Monday to reach an agreement, so far impossible, to be able to carry out its tax reform and avoid a resounding parliamentary defeat.
He has already postponed this vote twice due to the impossibility of making the positions of his parliamentary partners compatible. On the one hand, the left-wing partners (Bildu, ERC and Podemos) want to perpetuate taxes on energy companies and banks and create other taxes on public health, the use of vaping devices or socimis (real estate companies).
And on the other hand, the parties which, like PNV and Junts reject these taxes.
Sources from Moncloa consider it impossible to reach this agreement, although they assure that they will make a last attempt on Monday.
However, several spokespersons for groups in the investiture bloc expressed their surprise this Sunday to EL ESPAÑOL because until that moment they had not received any message from the government, much less any concrete offer to overcome the obstacle.
They did not speak to them on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and the finance committee meets this Monday afternoon.
These spokespersons say they do not understand why the Government postponed Thursday’s vote, if it did not negotiate afterwards. This is how they explain it in the absence of the Government’s capacity to undertake another surprise pirouette to overcome the situation.
The negotiations were led from the start by the first vice-president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, with criticism from several of her partners on the way in which they took place, as reported by EL ESPAÑOL.
This entire tax reform had to be approved in the form of amendments to a bill which provides for the transposition a European directive to harmonize taxes on multinationals throughout the European Union. This approval was going to be peaceful because, if the rule was not approved before January 1, there could be a sanction against Spain.
What caused the conflict was that the government wanted to use it as a platform for a tax reform that it undertook in Brussels to receive European funds.
It is for this reason that the PP suggested on Thursday that it would be willing to vote in favor of the bill, but without the amendments.
If there are no changes, the Finance Commission will approve the project for submission to the plenary session of the Congress, with the voices of the PSOE and the PP and with the partners of Pedro Sánchez against.
All this would show Sánchez’s difficulties in approving ideological and fiscal standards, foreseeing problems for budgets and the impossibility of addressing important issues such as regional financing or the tax agreement for Catalonia.
