The Instituto de Estudios Económicos (IEE) pointed out on Tuesday that the tax burden in Spain had reached historic highs in 2022, exceeding 42% of GDP and standing above the EU average (41.7%) for 2021 – the last year for which data are available. “The tax effort, i.e. the tax burden normalised according to income, is already 53% higher than the EU average”, warned the IEE President, Íñigo Fernández de…
Spain is amongst the countries with the least competitive tax system in the OECD. This is according to the new edition of the tax competitiveness ranking prepared by the Tax Foundation, in which Spain appears in 34th place out of a total of 38. This position, which represents a loss of two places compared to the 2021 edition and eight compared to 2020, leaves Spain ahead of only Ireland, Portugal,…
Despite the economic slowdown, the Spanish Treasury wants to achieve another record collection in 2023. This follows the one that will certainly be achieved in the current year, in which the collection is 27 billion euros more than expected due to inflation. The Treasury wants to achieve this after leaving a large part of middle-income earners (above 21,000 euros a year) out of its tax cut, which does not include…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The sequence of events is relevant to the outcome and has to do with the electoral confrontation. Behind and at the bottom of this debate or storm there is no doctrine or theory, there are no documents with well-founded proposals, it is just a matter of brushstrokes with ideological pretensions of little flight and quite a lot of trickery.The opposition party, with Núñez Feijóo at the…
J.P. Marín-Arrese | The Socialist-run regional governments in Spain face dire prospects in the coming elections next year. High inflation, low growth and rising unemployment weigh heavy on voters’ sentiments against the left-wing coalition governing Spain. So they resort to promising tax cuts as the best recipe to cushion their dwindling support. The Valencia Chairman, Mr Puig, has announced a cut in personal income tax, mirroring the national Opposition leader’s…
The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, yesterday joined the trail blazed by the president of Madrid by announcing he will grant a 100% rebate on wealth tax. He will also deflate personal income tax, with effect from the 2022 tax return, which is the one that will have to be accounted for to the Treasury next year. According to calculations made by the Andalusian government, this tax…
Luis Alcaide | In the wake of his meeting with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the main opposition candidate Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, recently elected president of the Partido Popular, complained that he had not been heard on his proposals on taxation: a reduction in personal income tax for taxpayers with lower incomes in order to compensate for the greater frequency of the effects of inflation. This is neither a pro-vo¬lu¬tionary nor…
The maximum marginal rate of Personal Income Tax (IRPF) now exceeds 50% in three autonomous communities: Valencia (54%), Navarra (52%) and La Rioja (51.5%), which impose a tax on high incomes that exceeds half of the income. And four others have a tax rate of 50%: Asturias (50%), Cantabria (50%), Canary Islands (50.5%), Catalonia (50%), In contrast, the Community of Madrid has established the lowest regional tax bracket in Spain….
Taxpayers may be under the impression that their pockets have suffered an increasing attention from their countries’ administrations. They are right to complain. The average standard VAT rate in the EU has risen strongly since 2008. In 2012, the standard VAT rate varies from 15.0% in Luxembourg and 17.0% in Cyprus to 27.0% in Hungary and 25.0% in Denmark and Sweden, data from the 2012 edition of taxation trends in the European…
LONDON | The British Property Federation issued a warning Thursday to Chancellor George Osborne ahead of possible Treasury action to close a stamp duty loophole through with foreign fortunes would be avoiding tax. The bill, according to official calculations, amounts to £1 billion, but UK’s property sector said that Osborne “must tread carefully with ‘super-rich’ stamp duty reform” and “tread lightly with any anti-avoidance intervention.” The BPF admitted there is a the…