This Thursday, the Spanish Parliament approved the extension for another three years of the extraordinary tax on banks created at the beginning of 2023 and which was justified by exceptional profits associated with inflation and the increase in interest rates.
The tax taxes the profits that banks obtain with interest and commissions and in the current version will be in effect until December 31.
What the Spanish Parliament approved this Thursday – with 178 votes in favor, 171 against and no abstentions – was a new tax, which It will be maintained for three years and is equally applicable to interest and commission income.
Specifically, The tax will be managed by the autonomous communities in which it is levied and will have progressive rates, between 1% and 7%, depending on the size of interest and commission earnings.
Thus, it will be 1% on profits of up to 750 million euros; 3.5% up to 1,500 million euros; 4.8% up to 3,000 million euros; 6% up to 5,000 million euros and 7% from 5,000 million euros.
When these extraordinary taxes were created, the government considered that extraordinary profits associated with inflation and rising interest rates were at stake, arguing that there had to be social justice in sharing the costs of the crisis generated by the pandemic or war. in Ukraine.
The President of the Government of Spain, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, celebrated this Thursday the approval by Parliament of this tax and other measures of a fiscal package presented by the Government to the deputies.
Sánchez affirmed, in statements to journalists in the Spanish Parliament, in Madrid, that this package is based on a “criterion of tax justice”, in which large companies, such as banks, are asked to make greater efforts and contribute to financing from public funds. social or emergency services and responses, using as an example the floods of October 29 in the Valencian Community.
The Spanish government, a left-wing coalition of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Somar platform, does not have an absolute parliamentary majority of support and depends on negotiations with a “contrivance” of eight political forces to pass laws.
Left out of the “tax reform” approved this Thursday is the extension of the extraordinary tax on energy companies, which taxes sales, created simultaneously with the banking tax and whose validity also ends on December 31.
Not all partners in the contraption agree to maintain the energy tax and the socialists, according to party and government sources, are now starting isolated negotiations on this issue.
The fiscal package, approved this Thursday, also includes an increase in the tax equivalent to the IRS for capital income exceeding 300,000 euros, a tax on disposable vaporizers or increases in diesel taxation.
On the other hand, it transposes the European directive that requires a minimum tax on multinationals of 15%, essential to unlock new European funds for Spain.
Source: Observadora
