In the same way that in the Spain 2030 Program the Government committed to pension reform and labor reform, it has also committed to tax reform: hence the commission of a commission of experts to prepare the proposal, a task which was done in a timely manner (the requirement was at the end of February). Now it's up to the Ministry, when the storm subsides, to decide whether to take that roadmap to the BOE. This kind of implicit Memorandum of Understanding is thus covered, in exchange for the immense European aid that the Next Generation funds represent: a fund for the well-being of the new generations with a pension system that does not condemn them, a regulation of the labor market that does not exclude them and a tax system that, through the deficit and indebtedness today, does not transfer the costs to them in the future.
Contrary to what some might think (among them, two resigned members of the commission) it was not about making the big bang of taxation (as big as it is useless, remembering what happened with the previous Lagares Report, which tried it) , but to adjust our tax system to the new realities of the economy: increasingly digital transactions, second-hand markets that are growing and exempt from taxation, internet purchases, new forms of wealth (NFT, crypto assets...), relocations in a world without borders, a growing incidence of tax havens and the appearance of a new imposition that is here to stay: environmental taxation.
That is what the White Paper promoted by the Institute of Fiscal Studies deals with. Although the social perception in favor of greater redistribution is growing, it is difficult to achieve it with the proposed tax reform, and even more so when there are pressures against the virtuality of the wealth and inheritance tax. With respect –despite the demand for more control– of family business assets, the maintenance of a fiscal duality between income from work and capital in favor of the latter, and changes in the tax on consumption, penalizing dirty energy in In particular, of a regressive nature, not much can be expected from fiscal changes in redistributive matters.
It is through transfers and public services that the tailor-made suit will have to be found to appease the inequality that affects the most fragile, and not through increasing or eliminating some taxes indiscriminately. And in any case, ensure a tax system that does not leave unstitched so that some fail to comply and works collecting without distorting in an unwanted way the proper functioning of the economy.
Allocative efficiency requires eliminating distortions between assets and within the types of the same asset (financial or real, conventional or cryptoactive) and between the forms of business activity (corporate, personal or autonomous). Territorial relocations must also be neutralized, against the stratification of bases that reproach business growth, given the use of different estimation regimes (modules, indirect). And evaluate deductions and rebates – one day introduced and never reconsidered again – or the need to maintain tax rates for categories of goods that end up distorting the coherence of production and consumption policies.
The star issue of any reform proposal continues to be the abolition or not of the wealth tax. But no tax system can be analyzed in parts without a vision of the whole. Taxation never starts from scratch. If it taxes capital flows less, it has to be able to do so on stock, in particular on assets subtracted from the production cycle, either during life or at the time of succession.
On the other hand, all countries tax wealth in some form. It is not true that it is not serious; perhaps they do not do it as much and as in Spain – hence the White Paper proposal reduces it. In France they charge even more against real estate wealth, and many do not have as many considerations as here with income from real assets, rents, family business, etc. It would also be unconstitutional not to tax assets as an expression of the economic capacity of citizens. Hence, it is not understood that the guardians of the Constitution on this point look the other way, or that from liberal positions one is opposed to fiscal harmonization within Spain but asks for it with Ireland or the Netherlands in the European Union. You can't be at mass and ringing.
