The Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, has been calling the tax on banks and energy companies a success for some time, a tax that has been highly contested by those affected, but which has not prevented them from adding benefits in recent years. This has been precisely one of the arguments used by the minister to defend the good performance of the tax. That it has contributed to the two sectors contributing “more fairly to the financing of the social shield and, furthermore, that it has been done without harming either the solvency of the financial sector or the excellent results that energy companies have also obtained. ”
Now, looking to the future, it is time to see what permanent form this tax takes, which, so far, is scheduled for only two years. In this area, the Government plans to provide incentives to energy companies for adding green objectives. Carlos Body quoted him in an interview with “La Vanguardia” when stating that the permanence of these two figures will have to go through negotiation in Congress and that “other economic policy objectives will have to be taken into account, such as the need for investments in green matter.”
Today the minister has added another potential incentive for banks, their support for SMEs. It would be about adjusting the tax to “some fundamental elements of economic policy such as the evolution of the interest rate cycle and support for SMEs,” he stated this morning at the New Economy Forum.
All in addition, having to go through Congress in which there are no longer absolute majorities or rollers. A reality that Body has tried to make a virtue of necessity. “This does not have to have any negative connotation, on the contrary because in the end the legislative projects that go through dialogue lead to this element of balance, are more sustainable and are normally long-term, those that last.”
In this way, the minister opens the way to introduce elements such as interest rates and the promotion of credits to SMEs to modulate the tax, but on the other hand, it does not enter into the request of the sector that, already apparently resigned to the tax, proposes formulas to make it less burdensome. For example, the governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, has asked that the tax be used to generate an incentive that increases the solvency of entities, as has been done in Italy.