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The Spanish government has failed to push through the energy tax that it wanted to establish as permanent from 2025. The coalition government will not be able to move forward with this measure, agreed in the investiture pact between PSOE and Sumar, following Junts' refusal to approve the new plans after days of pressure from the Catalan pro-independence party to veto an extension that had caused major friction with companies such as Repsol and Cepsa.
Negotiations between the parliamentary groups lasted until late on Wednesday 30 October to try to include all possible tax innovations in the text of the bill that will impose a minimum tax on large multinationals. This was supposed to include the amendment with the new energy tax, but "there has been no agreement", parliamentary sources told SUR.
Pressure had been mounting from Junts in recent days, as the deadline for including the amendments approached, as well as from the PNV, although the pressure was not so intense. Carles Puigdemont's party argued that the future of the petrochemical plant that the company headed by Josu Jon Imaz has in Tarragona, which is key to the Catalan economy, could be put at risk.
This was the same position that Repsol had taken since the PSOE and Sumar announced their intentions with this tax a year ago when they reached the investiture pact. The energy company, whose CEO is Josu Jon Imaz, had announced that it was keeping its industrial investments in Spain "frozen" pending the resolution of this tax. Last week, it also confirmed its commitment to a green hydrogen plant in Sines (Portugal), which became a sign of the group's intentions, in a continuous confrontation with the government over this issue.
This tax applied a rate of 1.2% on the turnover of energy companies that earned one billion euros in 2019. Repsol, Cepsa, Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy paid 1,355 million euros for the tax in 2023, while this year the impact would exceed one billion euros.
The banking tax however has been approved and will go ahead. Although it will also incorporate changes with respect to the one in place until now in order to minimise its impact. This is how the Catalan and Basque nationalists have negotiated it. In the latter case they have managed to achieve a figure that will be agreed with the Basque Country, which has speeded up the negotiation process. The PNV welcomes the fact that they will have regulatory capacity in the banking tax, together with the minimum tax on multinationals, which will thus be regulated by the provincial treasuries.
The renewed bank tax will apply a progressive rate ranging from 1% to 6% on income depending on the entity's net taxable income. It also includes a deduction of 25% of the corporate income tax payable by companies on their profits. And another extraordinary deduction is incorporated in the event that the bank suffers a sustained decline in its profitability.
The bank tax levied a rate of 4.8% on bank income, mainly from loans, as well as the commissions they charge their customers. This was established in mid-2022 as a result of the whirlwind of rate rises that the European Central Bank (ECB) began to apply, up to the maximum of 4.5% reached in the first half of this year. But now the context has changed and the government itself was aware that this figure could not continue under the same conditions. The minister for the economy, Carlos Cuerpo, had already anticipated that the new tax will not end up affecting "the results of the banks".
The agreement reached on Thursday afternoon between the Treasury and the parliamentary groups also involves changes in other taxes such as those on hydrocarbons, income tax and VAT. Specifically, it has raised the taxation of capital income in personal income tax, in order to gradually bring it closer to the taxation of the general base, where earned income is taxed. And they have also closed the taxation of diesel and petrol, leaving out professional diesel.
In the case of VAT, it has included the amendment that the oil sector has been calling for for months in an attempt to put an end to the million-dollar fuel fraud, for which the Treasury assumes an annual impact of around 1.9 billion euros. The solution - Italian-style - is to oblige distributors to pay VAT when they remove the fuel from the tanks where it is stored.
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