First legal setback for the entities for the bank tax. The National Court has rejected the precautionary measures requested by Bankinter, Sabadell and Cajasur, to suspend the banking tax, which has been applied since January of this year, until the Chamber begins to study the substance of the resource
As confirmed by Sabadell itself as well as other banking sources, the judicial body has rejected both the precautionary measures and the request to send the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to assess its legality in the framework European regulation. Both the employers of the sector and other entities will also fight the legal battle to try to stop the tax, since they consider that it could endanger a smooth transmission of monetary policy measures. Among other points, they argue that the amount of the lien could not be proportional to the profitability of the entities and could end up having an impact on customers.
The tax was approved at the end of 2022 with the aim of taxing the main income that the bank has obtained in the past financial year and start collecting in 2023. The objective of the Spanish Government is to collect 3,000 million euros between in 2023 and 2024, 1.5 billion euros each year. This new temporary banking tax levies a 4.8% interest and fees on all entities that invoice more than 800 million in 2019 and is limited to the activity that the entities carry out in Spain. The royal decree law prohibits the transfer of the levy to consumers, but the banks and the European Central Bank (ECB) have doubts that this imposition can be established. Until the lawsuit is resolved in the National Court, with an appeal to the Supreme Court, the affected entities will not be able to go to the Constitutional Court to enter into the substance of their constitutionality.
A few months ago, the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the National Court already rejected the precautionary measures requested by Repsol against the order of the Ministry of Finance that deploys the law that collects temporary taxes for energy companies and banks .
In this case, the court already explained that the requested precautionary measure could not be accepted because the rule does not cause irreparable damage to energy, since in the event that the appeal is finally upheld, it would be 'a perfectly reversible situation through the return of what had been paid with the mandatory interest payment.
In this resolution, it was argued that "the damages resulting from the non-suspension will only mean submitting to the obligation to make the declaration in the form provided for by the ministerial order". The justification of the National Court is that in the event of suspending the order and, with the latter, the law, it would indeed cause "serious damage to the general interest because it would become impossible to collect the lien".
