Tuesday, March 28

The four errors of the PP hoax on fuel taxes

The Popular Party has moved an image on its social networks in which it makes an alleged breakdown that compares the price of fuel for the usual vehicles before and after taxes. But the image, as well as the accompanying text, is riddled with errors.

The example chosen by the main opposition party, and one of the four that has sat in the Council of Ministers of Spain, is that of gasoline. Due to his past, he should know well how the taxes paid in Spain are calculated. In fact, his imminent president, Alberto Núñez FeijĂło, has chosen “prepared” as the slogan of his internal campaign, and has made his “management experience” one of the levers in his opposition to the coalition government.

These are the most obvious flaws:

No. You do not pay 40 euros in special taxes for every 100 euros of fuel for your vehicle

The calculation of the taxes paid on the fuel does not work as the PP tries to show in its image. The cost of the Special Tax on Hydrocarbons is fixed and independent of the price per liter and is only variable if the law is modified. That is, you pay the same for each liter, whether it costs 1, 2 or 10 euros.

The general rate used in Spain for gasoline (which is the product chosen by the PP for its example) is 400.69 euros per 1,000 litres. That is, 40 cents per liter. By law.

Currently the average price of this type of fuel in Spain is 1,813 euros, of which 40 correspond to the Hydrocarbons tax. That is, approximately 22%. Therefore, for every 100 euros you pay in gasoline, around 22 euros correspond to special taxes, and not 40.

No. You do not pay 57 euros in taxes for every 100 euros of fuel for your vehicle

That first error leads to the final account proposed by the PP being wrong. According to data from the European Commission, for every liter of gasoline that is refueled, Spain pays 43.4% of taxes, including special taxes and VAT.

It would not be, therefore, the 57 euros that the PP encrypts, which is correct in the VAT estimate that it offers in the image. But bounce, since it applies a formula based on the previous calculation, which is wrong. That is, in 100 euros of gasoline, about 17 correspond to VAT. But in no case would 43 be for fuel and 40 for the Special Tax on Hydrocarbons.

Since the Special Tax is fixed, it should be noted that as long as the price continues to rise, since there is no tax change involved, the percentage collected by the public coffers over the total cost per liter decreases.

Despite the messages about how much Spaniards pay for fuel taxes, the truth is that they do so less than most of their European partners. Only six European countries are below Spain: Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Belgium.


No. The Government does not “make money” with fuel.

At least not in the singular. In any case, it should be: “governments make money while the Spanish are getting poorer every day.” Because both the Special Tax on Hydrocarbons and VAT are taxes shared by the central and regional governments.

The distribution of Hydrocarbons is in fact favorable to the autonomous communities: 58% of what the State collects goes to the regional coffers, as the regional presidents of the PP know very well, including FeijĂło himself, who heads the Xunta de Galicia for 13 years. In fact, at a rally in Madrid in his campaign to strengthen his leadership within the PP, he himself, along with Isabel DĂ­az Ayuso, recognized him.

VAT is easier to calculate: 50% for the central government, 50% for each community.

The strange thing is that the PP falls into this trap for the second time in just two weeks. FeijĂło himself said during another of those acts to make himself known after being designated as the only candidate for the primaries of his party that the Government was “lining” with taxes, expressly leaving out the autonomous communities.

He also included in his words references to the price of electricity in homes, when part of the fiscal bill for electricity, the Special Electricity Tax, is 100% ceded to the autonomies.

When he was made to see his ruling, the Galician president rectified, in his own way, in that aforementioned act in Madrid. He recognized that these taxes are distributed among 18 governments and changed the step: he no longer accused the central Executive of lining up, but instead asked that taxes be lowered and that he, and Ayuso who agreed by his side, had the legitimacy to demand it as regional presidents who receive those funds.

A more complicated idea to explain in a single image whose mission is to go around social networks and jump from mobile to mobile, for which the PP has returned to the original approach that it is the central government, and only the central government, that makes a box Be fakebut it is better to build your story.

No. Sanchez does not “take 57 euros” for every 100 you spend on fuel for your vehicle

It is perhaps the most extemporaneous part of the message, and the reason why it seems that they have decided to remove the regional governments from the equation and, with them, Feijóo, Ayuso, Juan Manuel Moreno, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco or Fernando López Miras.

It is a double obviousness that Pedro Sánchez does not “take away” 57 euros out of every 100 that a Spaniard pays for gasoline. First, because the Presidency of the Government is not the body that takes it. In any case, it would be the Ministry of Finance. But it is that, in addition, much less the person Pedro Sánchez “takes” those euros. The salary of the Prime Minister is public: 86,542.08 euros per year. That is exactly what Sánchez “takes away”.





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