The Minister of Finance and Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, announced this Monday that, “over the next few days”, the Government will present a package of fiscal measures that will be applied next year, with which it will respond to the “fiscal populism” that he has attributed to the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and to the tax reduction race in which the regional presidents of his formation have embarked. As Montero has advanced, some of these measures will already be included in the draft general budget of the State for the year 2023, as they are adjustments to existing taxes, and others will go into a specific rule, such as the new tax announced for large fortunes, for which a rapid parliamentary procedure will be sought and they will be effective next year as well. The Executive thus points to a selective increase in taxes -probably in Personal Income Tax and in Companies- that would not affect what it calls the middle and working classes.
With this announcement, which the Minister of Finance has not yet wanted to specify, the Government and the PSOE are responding to both the fiscal offensive deployed by the PP and the insistent claims by the coalition’s minority partner, United We Can, before the negotiation of the new project of general budgets of the State.
María Jesús Montero has warned that all the fiscal measures that the Government is finalizing will have the same objective of “protecting the majority of our fellow citizens”, with “surgical” tax cuts such as those that are already being applied, in addition to reinforcing the State welfare in times of crisis, and to provide resources to help the most vulnerable families and the economic sectors most affected by the consequences of the war in Ukraine, with the increase in energy prices and the shopping basket.
The Minister of Finance has not wanted to advance anything more about these fiscal measures, but at the same time she has been convinced that she will reach an agreement with Vice President Yolanda Díaz and with United We Can to be able to close a new budget project. “Both formations know the importance of having new budgets in a timely manner. We will have new budgets in a timely manner”, said Montero, so that the new accounts can come into force on January 1. And she has hoped to achieve an agreement “soon” within the government coalition between the PSOE and United We Can.
The also deputy general secretary of the PSOE has framed her announcements in a harsh speech against the “neoliberal recipes” that she has attributed to the PP. “Without taxation, there is no welfare state,” she warned. Montero has blamed the main opposition party for a policy that seeks an “emptying of the fiscal capacity” of the State, which would later force it to apply “cuts” in public health and education, and would later open the doors to privatization.
