The Treasury has already returned more than 300 million euros to the large business groups that appealed the corporate tax reform approved by Cristóbal Montoro’s department in 2016 and which the Constitutional Court annulled in order to use a royal decree law. They are the first repayments, since, according to financial sources, the decrease for public accounts could reach 3,000 million. The first extraordinary return that the Administration has to deal with is recorded in the latest collection report of the Tax Agency, published yesterday.
In its ruling, the guarantee court limited refunds to large companies that had previously resorted to the reform. But the amounts that will reduce revenue are significant. The Treasury does not provide information on the beneficiaries, but some companies have already calculated a positive impact on their income statements from last year. Telefónica estimated the recovery of 541 million; IAG, 191 million; Railway, 37 million; Indra, 14.5 million, and FCC, 6.4 million.
The Ministry of Finance, however, is not resigned to losing this revenue and will try to recover it through a change in the corporate tax law. That is why the PSOE registered in Congress an amendment to the anti-crisis bill that wants to “avoid a loss of revenue”. The Socialists negotiate these changes with other parliamentary groups.
In the same tax collection report, there is also a positive impact on public revenues of 54 million due to the progressive recovery of the tax on electricity. From next Monday, the tax rate will rise by 3.8% and on July 1st it will return to the original 5.11%.
Tax revenues again reached a new historical record in 2023. The Tax Agency collected 271,935 million euros, 6.4% more than in 2022. In January and February 2024, tax collection continues to grow by 6.6% and 5.9%, which is expected that at the end of the year the records will be pulverized again.
These good revenue figures made it possible to reduce the public deficit to 3.64% of GDP at the end of 2023, according to the final budget execution data also published yesterday, a figure even lower than that which had been advanced last week.
In a year of the return of the fiscal rules and with the commitment to bridle the deficit to 3%, the Treasury advanced that the budget gap stood at 0.61% of GDP in February, compared to 0.64% the same period of 2023.
