The Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has asserted that the laws that are going to create the new taxes on energy companies and banks will include the prohibition of passing on this tax to the final prices or the cost of the services they provide.
In statements today to Cadena Ser, the government spokesperson also explained that the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) will be given the functions to monitor and, "where appropriate, apply sanctions", if noncompliance occurs in this regard. "The norm will already have it implicit", affirmed the head of the Treasury, who has assured that the Government is determined to apply these taxes despite the opposition of the companies in these sectors.
Montero has denied that the taxes announced by the President of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, in this week's general policy debate in Congress generate legal uncertainty, while criticizing his opinion without knowing the details of the new taxes. In addition, he has stressed that the tax on energy companies will also be paid by electricity companies, as well as gas and oil companies, and has said that he does not understand "where he gets" Iberdrola that it will not affect him.
The minister thus responded to the vice president of the energy company, the former socialist leader Antonio Carmona, who said yesterday that the new tax announced by the Government will be charged to oil and gas companies, given the reduction in profits experienced by electricity companies in Spain. "We understand that this tax is for the oil and gas companies that represent 75% of the energy. We, quite the contrary, have a cut in results in Spain due to the increase in gas prices and having 80% of the electricity demand sold at a fixed price," said Carmona.
The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has also spoken on the issue in an interview on TVE, where he has said that he "will be vigilant" so that electricity companies and banks do not pass on the new taxes on their extraordinary profits to their clients. Likewise, he recalled that they are tributes along the lines "of what all of Europe is doing", that they will be "temporary and exceptional" and that they "will contribute 7,000 million euros" to public coffers over the course of two years, an amount that will be will go directly to "ordinary people, the social majority".
In this sense, he recalled that what no country is doing is applying the PP's recipe for a general reduction in taxes. "We are being very surgical in the taxes that we want to reduce, such as electricity," he said before ruling out changes in personal income tax, because "we want to do things that are useful and consistent with the Government's line."
