The Government is moving in the Congress of Deputies to recover the refunds that the Tax Agency is obliged to make to large companies. They are the ones who appealed the corporate tax reform promoted by Cristóbal Montoro in 2016 and got the Constitutional Court to partially overthrow it. The consequence of the ruling implies the return of up to 3,000 million during 2024 to various corporate groups. The Ministry of Finance assumes the blow, but, through the PSOE, has presented an amendment to the anti-crisis bill to strengthen the regulations and recover the revenue that it will lose.
Amendment 196, already registered by the PSOE group in the lower house, seeks to “avoid the loss of revenue that implies the expulsion from the legal system of the legal provisions affected” by the Constitutional ruling. According to financial sources, this loss in revenue will be between 2,000 and 3,000 million. Several Ibex companies have already admitted a positive fiscal impact on their income statements as a result of the court ruling. Telefónica has estimated the recovery of 541 million; IAG, 191 million; Ferrovial, 37 million; Indra, 14.5 million; and FCC, 6.4 million.
The amendment specifies that the objective of the reform of the Corporate Tax law is to recover the limits on the compensation of negative tax bases for large companies annulled as a result of the judicial setback. However, in the registered text there is a tightening of the regulations which, according to Cristina Fernández, director of the Corporate Tax Services area at KPMG Abogados, implies more burdensome measures than the initial situation annulled by the Constitutional Court.
For example, according to the Cuatrecasas office, the text limits the limitation of compensation to companies with a turnover of at least 20 million euros to 50% or 25%. Montoro’s norm placed it at 70%. In addition, the amendment provides for the full reversal in fiscal year 2024 (and not in fifths, as stated in the Montoro decree) of losses due to impairment of securities that have not yet been reversed. César Florez, coordinator of the expert group of the tax association Aedaf, adds that the modification of the corporate tax should not “further increase the tax burden.”
The PSOE must now seek the votes of its investiture partners to be able to carry out this amendment in Parliament and recover the loss of revenue.
