The regional financing system, expired since 2014, last year once again favored citizens of some communities in a notable way and harmed residents of others. Taking the per capita contribution of the current financial aid model as a reference and adjusting it to the type of population, the inhabitants of the Community of Madrid received over the past year 166 euros more per person than the national average. Specifically, each person from Madrid received a contribution of 3,128 euros, above the 2,962 euros of the state average. In the case of Catalonia, funding per individual was 2,924 euros, 38 euros below the average for all Spaniards and 204 euros less than that of Madrid residents.
The Fiscal Authority (Airef) has updated its economic-financial information observatory for the autonomous communities, in which population calculations take into account the percentage of elderly people, children, as well as insularity or dispersion. Airef maintains that this methodology gives more quality to the data. The calculation is not based on the population provided by the census, but on an "adjusted" population according to the aforementioned parameters.
The current regional financing model, so criticized by the affected communities, continues to benefit, for yet another year, regions such as Cantabria, whose citizens received 3,660 euros last year, the Canary Islands, La Rioja and Extremadura. In the last three regions mentioned, the system's per capita economic contribution exceeded 3,330 euros. In the case of the other two large territories by population, the Valencian Community and Andalusia, both autonomies continue to be in the tail wagon of the resources received. Specifically, each Andalusian received a total of 2,757 euros in 2022, and each Valencian, 2,777 euros. They are 205 and 185 euros less respectively than the national average, always according to the data offered by the tax supervisor in his observatory.
Financing is understood as the resources provided by the central system, both in terms of deliveries on account and those managed by the autonomous community. Its configuration, however, is based on an obsolete model, since the autonomous Spain of 2023 is not the same as that of 2009, when it was approved. The central governments of the PP and PSOE have tried to renew this model in recent years, but they have not been able to modify it due to the lack of political consensus. The popular ones have promised to present a new system, if they govern as of next Sunday, while the current Ministry of Finance has already thought of launching its own proposal, an initiative postponed due to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the inflationary crisis.
The Fiscal Authority also offers in its economic-financial information observatory extensive information on the tax capacity of the autonomous communities and the amount of economic resources that each territory stopped collecting by subsidizing or directly suppressing some taxes. The differences in this section are also notable. In Catalonia, 0.62% of GDP was renounced to enter last year, which means something more than 4,350 million. In the autonomy presided over by Pere Aragonès, property transfer taxes, documented legal acts, certain means of transport and own taxes were above the national average.
The public coffers of the Community of Madrid, for their part, stopped collecting 2.18% of their GDP to subsidize the wealth tax, among others, or renounce having their own taxes, being from January 1, 2022 the Spain's only autonomy in this situation (in Catalonia there were fifteen own taxes in force in 2022). The percentage of tax benefits in Madrid is the highest in the State and also the highest since there are records. It supposes a decrease in the collection of about 12,000 million. The national average of tax benefits applied in the different territories is 0.72% of GDP, excluding the Basque Country and Navarra, which have their own farms.
Another piece of information that Airef offers is public spending on essential services, that is, on health, education and social care. In this section, the Basque Country and Navarra items stand out, where 4,341 and 4,002 euros per capita were spent last year. In Catalonia, this investment stood at 3,539 euros per citizen last year, above the national average, which was 3,303 euros. Madrid was the community that spent the least last year on fundamental public services: 3,248 euros per inhabitant.
Breaking down the items, Catalonia spent 1,902 euros per citizen on health last year, compared to the 1,770 euros for the state average. In education, the investment for each Catalan was 1,152 euros, compared to the 1,099 euros on average in Spain. And in social services it amounted to 485 euros per individual, compared to 378 euros on average.
