The Constitutional Court has given the right to the Spanish Government and not to the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, after giving the endorsement to the solidarity tax on the great fortunes approved in 2022 by the Executive of Pedro Sanchez Ayuso's response has been to announce the urgent processing of a new law for the region to collect this tax directly.
The sentence of the Constitutional Court has had the private votes of the four conservative magistrates, Ricardo Enríquez, César Tolosa, Enrique Arnaldo and Concepción Espejel, who believe that the tax encroaches on autonomous powers. The other seven magistrates considered to be part of the progressive majority have supported the report of magistrate María Luisa Balaguer, in which no element of unconstitutionality is seen in the tax, since it is understood that it neither invades powers nor generates insecurity legal In his direct confrontation with the central government, Ayuso argued that this measure not only goes "against savings and investment", but also that it is designed specifically against Madrid and Andalusia.
The ruling rules out that the new tax supplants the autonomous competences for the management of ceded taxes, such as the property tax, which in the Community of Madrid has been subsidized at 100% since 2008.
The court has endorsed the way of legislating this rule. The ruling warns that the purpose of the law was to provide public revenue with which to face the consequences of the energy and price crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Therefore, the amendment meets the requirement of homogeneity.
With regard to the allegation of the Community of Madrid regarding the violation of financial autonomy, the judgment recalls that the tax on large fortunes is complementary to the property tax - tax of state ownership transferred to the communities - "so that what satisfies this tax is discounted to determine the quota of the new tax, which does not affect any of the autonomous powers over the IP or interfere with it".
The judgment emphasizes that the appeal does not indicate any autonomous jurisdiction that has been affected by the contested tax. "The real complaint of the Community of Madrid is that its residents with assets of more than 3 million euros (the only ones subject to the tax on large fortunes) will have to pay the new state tax, with which Madrid loses its fiscal appeal to attract the aforementioned wealth to its territory", warn the magistrates.
This is the first appeal to be reviewed against the tax, but the court says that for the pending cases - that of the Junta de Andalucía, the Assembly of Madrid, the Xunta de Galicia and Murcia - the same doctrine will be applied .
The ruling of the TC had an immediate response from Ayuso: "We will not stand still and we will process an emergency legislative reform in the regional Assembly that will allow us to collect all this tax so that it stays in the Madrid coffers". In other words, the ruling forces Madrid to recover the property tax.
The speed with which the president of the Community moved the card indicated that for weeks Puerta del Sol had been afraid of a judicial slap in its umpteenth battle in the courts against the coalition Government, which, it must be remembered, has reached accuse the Madrid Executive of promoting fiscal dumping.
The reduction of taxes has been a maxim of Ayuso's policies since his arrival on the front line, less than five years ago. But before allowing the Ministry of Finance to collect the tax on the great fortunes, the popular leader prefers to correct herself and assume this tax.
According to sources consulted by La Vanguardia, it is likely that the bill will be based on a limitation of the current bonus to the property tax in the region to tax fortunes of more than three million euros - the section on which it operates the tax articulated by the Central Government–. All this without ruling out that a good part of the income is dedicated to continuing to lower taxes in the Community of Madrid. The great fortunes of Madrid supported most of the first collection of the solidarity tax. The Treasury received 623.6 million this year, 555 of which from Madrid assets.
"We will do it as soon as possible, so that this collection remains in the hands of the Madrid taxpayer and, in this way, we can return it", added Ayuso.
