Andalusia warns of the flight of taxpayers to Portugal because of the government’s tax on the rich
Announcements about changes in tax regulations are not harmless. This was confirmed by the Secretary General of Finance of the Andalusian Junta, Manuel Vasquez Martin, this Thursday at the opening of the annual conference of the Registry of Tax Advisers (RIAF) in Cadiz. A few weeks ago, when the Council announced its decision to support the wealth tax fee by 100%, as the Community of Madrid has been doing for a decade, the information that reached the Andalusian administration from tax advisory offices was that many foreigners are the ones who stay in certain seasons of The generals in Al-Andalus were increasingly interested in establishing their residence in the territory; For a few days the weather changed. “What comes to us from the desks is that since the government announced the solidarity tax, the questions that come back to us come from taxpayers who They want to move their residence to Portugal », he alerted. “We’ll see the impact of that eventually.”
The government’s maneuver swept the financial strategy of Andalusia. The high position assured the board that they had long seen inheritance, donations, and heritage taxes as problematic to reform some of the territory’s taxpayers. “It is a tax that does not exist in other countries and foreigners do not understand it,” said the Secretary General of the Andalusian Treasury.
Al-Andalus’ intention was to reform these rents in the region. They understand that precedents have supported the strategy. The Council is convinced that the tax cuts strategy that they have been developing since 2018 and which has reduced the tax burden of all taxes remitted by the state, is behind 400,000 taxpayers increased personal income tax which they claim to have obtained since then. With the decision to support the wealth tax at 100%, the council realized that it could “obtain tax residency for many non-residents of Andalusia,” in the words of the Secretary General. The government’s financial maneuvering to demand these taxes for the state has destroyed that strategy.
The Andalusian tax plan is going through the reduction and even the abolition of tax charges on inheritance (about 100 million euros per year), bequests and donations (before the reform of the council they contributed 350 million, now they contribute about 240 million), which they understand to be of little importance on a total budget of 40.000 million, And the Thus attracting new taxpayers from the income taxIt is a figure through which the Andalusian coffers enter about 7,000 million euros annually. He admitted that “the philosophy was that the important thing was to feed the income tax collector”.
Since the government was responsible for highlighting the creation of the new Solidarity Tax for the Great Wealth, This plan is not popular with La MoncloaEither because it is based on tax cuts or because it could exacerbate a situation of “tax dumping” which, in his view, harms other autonomous communities.
The head of the General Council of Economists, Valenti Pitch, was highly critical this Thursday of the way the government is behaving and questioned the fact that Using “Administrative Shortcuts” and “Cheats” To resolve a dispute he believes must be addressed through reform of the regional financing system.
“We see with great concern that in a federal country like Spain, conflicts between the central government and the autonomous regions are resolved by acting when there is nothing the autonomy does not like, when what you have to do is direct it,” he affirmed. .. «We are surprised by the inability to implement a regional financing project that would allow arranging all these conflicts. What we can’t do is cheat.”
