At this point, last year, a budget agreement had already been closed between the PSC, Esquerra and En Comú Podem for the fiscal year 2023 and the bill had begun its processing in the Parliament. This year, the last of the Catalan legislature, conditioned by the elections last summer and the negotiations for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez that lasted until November, that issue was left in the background during the fall.
It seems that the Government now has the will to accelerate with this issue and today Junts meets with the Executive of Pere Aragonès to address the matter. Yesterday the commons did it and the PSC, in parallel, has also met with the Government several times.
At today's meeting, the second of the post-convergent meetings with the Executive - the first was before Christmas -, JxCat will put on the table its conditions to negotiate and support a budget project. According to what his vice president and spokesperson, Josep Rius, said on Monday, his proposal to the Minister of Economy and Hisenda, Natàlia Mas, is “feasible, rigorous and ambitious.” The Junts leader implied that one of the main points has to do with “reducing fiscal pressure.”
According to sources consulted, at the meeting of the expanded Junts executive on Monday it was agreed that one of the notable measures would be the request to eliminate the inheritance tax, a 99% bonus on the fee paid by spouses, parents and children in case of acquiring property due to the death of a family member. In the party they consider that it is an unfair tax, that it penalizes savings and that it affects the middle classes.
The post-convergents also plan to demand the exclusion of inheritance tax in cases of generational change in family businesses up to the third degree, an initiative that wants to facilitate continuity and family change in these companies and prevent relocations to other areas of the State where the tribute is not paid.
Likewise, those of Jordi Turull advocate that people who take the reins of a family business be treated as entrepreneurs, incorporating them into the aid and subsidies provided for entrepreneurship cases, from which they are usually left out because it is considered that their businesses are old.
Another of the issues that the party leadership approved at that meeting was to request that in the autonomous part of the personal income tax the lowest bracket be reduced from 10% to 9.5% to help the lowest incomes; deflate all income tax brackets by 5% due to the continued rise in the cost of living and an increase in the personal minimum bonus by 7.5%, as well as various deductions for expenses related to the field of health, for the payment of fees in public or private sports facilities and for the payment of medical insurance.
This whole issue is not new on Junts' agenda. In the congress two years ago, when Carles Puigdemont's party was still part of the Government, the issue of the elimination of the inheritance tax as well as the reduction of more taxes, personal income tax and corporation taxes, among others, was already included in the sectoral presentation. That presentation also included a proposal to analyze the convenience of eliminating the wealth tax or raising the minimum tax exemption in some cases.
It will not be new to the Government either. When the two pro-independence parties shared the Executive there was already some scuffle, even in the parliamentary headquarters, and in the negotiation for last year's budgets, more similar demands were already put on the councilor's table, in a similar context. A deflation of personal income tax had been demanded in all sections to prevent hypothetical wage increases in a scenario of rising prices from ending up in the hands of the treasury and tax cuts. This measure was defended by the then Minister of Economy and Hisenda Jaume Giró just two days before leaving office.
The deflation that was requested in November 2022 was 3.5% in all sections, now 5%. The list of demands also included that the inheritance tax return to 2011 levels, the same as what is requested now, and give impetus to macro projects, the Ronda del Vallès, the expansion of the El Prat airport and the Hard Rock in the regions of Tarragona.
