Thursday, March 28

What tax reform do the experts propose?


The Tax Reform it’s not closed yet. But the experts that he Treasury appointed to make proposals finalize the document you want to present within a month. “There is nothing closed. Not even a document with the proposals that are being debated,” say sources close to this group of scholars. In any case, this Thursday a meeting of the members of this committee has been planned to try to pool the different proposals worked on, with the “complicated” objective that it can be translated into a draft to be sent to the Ministry, according to the same sources. .

The proposals largely revolve around incorporating the technology in the tax system for avoid the flight of resources that occurs with digital transactions, cryptocurrencies, ‘family offices’ and other instruments that erode tax bases. That is, in essence, a basic principle, which led to the minimum corporate tax for multinationals agreed by more than 130 countries.

According to people close to the committee, “this is the only way to prevent the way of increasing the collection whether those who already pay do so more”. The basic thing, they add, is “to capture part of the resources that escape through these channels and the assets that grow without going through the Treasury box”. Spain entered almost eight points less of GDP than the euro zone average between 2011 and 2020, with public spending four points below in the same period.

The green or environmental taxation (Spain earns 1.77% of GDP in this way, below the euro zone average of 2.35%), the digital transactions or cryptocurrencies like bitcóin They are part of the concerns of this group of wise men who propose initiatives to expand the tax base on which taxes can be collected or that, at least, reduce the possibilities of circumvention of the treasury coffers.

two dropouts

The different points of view of the specialists have led to the abandonment carried out by two of its components, the professors of Public Finance Ignatius Zubiri Y Charles Monastery. In April of last year, the Minister of Finance, Maria Jesus Montero, presented the commission of 17 experts to prepare a white paper for the Tax Reform. Presided over by Jesús Ruiz-Huerta (creator of the fiscal balances with the socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) and with Alain Cuenca (general director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies) as secretary, this group then had professors and experts such as Fran Adame, Antonia Agulló, Olga Cantó, Laura de Pablos, Santiago Díaz de Sarralde, Xavier Labandeira, Santiago Lago, Guillem López Casasnovas, Julio López Laborda; David López Rodríguez, Carlos Monasterio, Saturnina Moreno, Violeta Ruiz Almendral, Maria Teresa Soler and Marta Villar. The committee came to have 18 members, with the subsequent entry of Ignacio Zubiri, professor of Public Finance at the University of the Basque Country. And now, after his departure and that of Monastero, Professor of Public Finance at the University of Oviedo, he is 16.

more difficult consensus

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In any case, according to sources close to this committee, the essential problems lie in the different points of view between the tax law experts and economists, an excess of members in the commission that, despite assuming in principle a greater plurality, hinders the consensus, and the need for good coordination, with a left hand to manage discrepancies and conflicts.

The idea, in any case, is not to set one recipe or another that the Government must comply with. “If the Executive expects to be told whether to raise or lower one or the other taxes, it will be defrauded,” sources close to the committee assure. In fact, what is being worked on is giving different options. The Government, which has as one of its objectives harmonize taxes ceded to the autonomies, such as estate, inheritance or donations, to avoid a competence like the one that currently exists starring the Madrid’s community, plans to launch the tax reform in 2023, as stated in the recovery plan forwarded to Brussels. Some of the experts have proposed reducing the ceded and own taxes communities and compensate them for it, which would mean lowering their regulatory capacity.



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