Podemos has materialized the proposal raised yesterday by its general secretary and minister of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda, Ione Belarra, to raise the new extraordinary tax on banks. The party's intention, as indicated today by its Secretary for Government Action, Pablo Echenique, is to double the tax and allocate a significant part of the collection to help mortgaged families in distress.
The party's proposal consists of doubling the tax rate, which would go from taxing 4.8% of bank income to 9.6%. The Government calculates that, under current terms, the measure will serve to raise close to 1,500 million euros a year during the two years in which it will be applied, which are 2023 and 2024.
The party, which yesterday criticized the Government for "falling short" in the tax after learning that the banks have earned 5,700 million euros in the first quarter, also wants half of the collection to be used to set up a Social Responsibility Fund for help vulnerable families and households, which are those that earn less than three times the IPREM.
The fund, he assures, would be used primarily to grant aid "to reduce the rise in mortgages for these families by half." The tax is currently applied to banks with revenues greater than 800 million euros per year.
In a complementary way, Podemos also proposes to limit the differential of variable mortgages of less than 300,000 euros to 0.1% for at least one year. At present, the differential with respect to the Euribor is generally around 1%.
These measures, he says, are raised in response to the latest results from Santander, BBVA, Caixabank, Sabadell, Bankinter and Unicaja, which earned 5.7 billion euros in the first quarter of the year, 14% more. The increases in rates have triggered the interest margin of entities by 28%.
