The autonomies receive an annual contribution from the State equivalent to what is expected to be collected in that territory from totally and partially ceded taxes. The regulatory changes introduced by the autonomous communities are not taken into account, such as the tax cuts in Madrid, Andalusia or Galicia this year, nor are the increases. In addition, the deliveries made two years ago are regularized. Normally it is always a contribution but there are some cases, such as during the real estate crisis or the covid, in which it is the communities that must "return" money to the State because they received too much.
Of the first advance, 25% goes directly to each community while the remaining 75% goes to a big bag. And that 75% is distributed in another way to comply with the financing system. To make the distribution, the population criterion adjusted by a series of parameters is used, such as the percentage of elderly, young or immigrants and the volume of population dispersion.
In these cases, a community can receive an amount above what would correspond to it based exclusively on the number of inhabitants. In this way, it is achieved a priori to balance the distribution of resources according to the needs of each territory.
If a community has a very aged population, it will receive more resources. For example, Catalonia concentrated in 2020 17.52% of the inhabitants excluding the Basque Country and Navarre. Once the adjusted population has been calculated, the percentage drops to 17.11%, since it has little dispersion. Instead, Galicia gains weight as it goes from 6.09% to 6.56%.
From here on, the model loses the initial leveling system since a series of funds are introduced that distort the model. These are the global sufficiency funds and the convergence fund, which in turn are made up of the competitiveness and cooperation funds.
The first of these funds seeks to ensure that there are no communities that are harmed by the current financing model launched in 2009 compared to the previous one. Therefore, if with the new model, a community lost money through the system, it was compensated with extra resources.
The competitiveness fund seeks to improve financing for the most dynamic communities. On the other hand, the cooperation one seeks to help the less developed autonomies. Therefore, roughly speaking, there is a fund so that the communities do not lose out with the model, another to benefit the rich, and another to benefit the poor.
Maite Vilalta's calculations at the IEB-UB show that in 2020, Catalonia lost 1,424 million euros due to the application of the current model. But at the same time, it lost its position in the ranking of communities with the highest income per capita.
At the start, the community has resources 20% above the average thanks to the taxes paid in the territory, making it the second autonomy in the Spanish ranking. On the other hand, when the model is applied, the resources of Catalonia become 1% above the average. But at that time, Catalonia falls to eighth place in the ranking.
Joan B. Casas, from Economistes pel Benestar, believes that it is especially important that the principle of orderliness not be lost and that the communities with the greatest fiscal resources do not end up being the ones that receive the least resources. Perhaps one of the communities that came out worst off was Valencia, which has 2% lower resources per inhabitant and after the application of the model has 5% less.
