Question... of the million: how many millionaires are there in Spain? In the midst of the debate on the tax on large fortunes, it is practically impossible to know the exact number of the rich who are taxed in Spain.
For example, if you look at the statistics of the Tax Agency regarding the declaration of wealth tax at the state level in the year 2020, the number of settlements greater than 1.5 million euros, only 66,000 taxpayers would be reached. To that number should be added those citizens who pay taxes at one million and one and a half million, which is not available. The final figure would range between 100,000 and 150,000, making an estimate based on the data from the lower section of the declarations.
In order to have a more precise number of millionaires, it would also be necessary to add the citizens who reside in the Community of Madrid and who have a high net worth but do not reach two million. That is the limit to have the obligation to present the declaration even if the tax is discounted at 100%.
We have a possible approximation of the number of Spanish millionaires if we go to the research carried out by the consulting firm Cap Gemini last June. In his study, he counts some 246,500 holders of large fortunes (over a million dollars) in Spain in 2021, a growth of 4.4% compared to 2020. According to these sources, Spain would be among the twenty countries with the most inhabitants millionaires
A totally different calculation is the one that has just been made, instead, by the Swiss entity Credit Suisse in its Global Wealth Report, with data referring to 2021: in Spain there would be 1.1 million people who have a net worth of more than one million of dollars. Specifically, according to these sources, last year closed with 1,132,000 millionaires in Spain, about 17,000 less than last year. If you look at the global graph of Credit Suisse, Spain is positioned in the top 15 millionaires worldwide. The dance of the figures between the different sources can be explained by the fact that, for example, the habitual residence is exempt from the wealth tax, which instead does enter into the global calculations of the consultants.
Instead, there seems to be some consensus on who the richest in Spain are. The latest list (April of this year) of Forbes magazine counts 28 billionaires, that is, with assets of more than 1,000 million, out of a total of 2,668 spread around the world.
In the leading trio, Amancio Ortega, founder of Inditex, with more than 56,000 million euros; and his daughter Sandra Ortega, with more than 5,200 million euros, in second place; while Juan Roig, from Mercadona, closes the podium, with more than 3,800 million of available wealth.
Faced with so much confusion of data, in the end we have to resort to Groucho Marx's famous joke: "Happiness is made of little things, a small yacht, a small mansion, a small fortune." The problem is that, in Spain, when one speaks of "small" (or large), nobody agrees.
