Congress is approaching another agonizing vote, with last-minute negotiations and with everything pending just a few votes. After reaching an agreement at the last minute with ERC, EH Bildu and the BNG, the PSOE focuses all its efforts on convincing Podemos to support the fiscal package that will serve to direct the negotiation for the Budgets. Ione Belarra’s party threatens to overthrow him if he does not have guarantees that, in parallel, the Government obtains support to expand the tax on electricity companies.
In the last hours, the negotiators of the socialist part of the Executive accelerated meetings and contacts with Podemos. The Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, held at least three meetings in the last 24 hours with the formation, in some with the presence of the first vice president, María Jesús Montero. But the talks are complicated and, as of late Wednesday afternoon, they were still stuck.
The problem at this point is that the Government has a very weak balance to reconcile all the support of the investiture bloc. And any piece that moves in one direction or another can overturn the agreements reached on Monday in the Finance Commission with Junts and PNV, on the one hand, and ERC, EH Bildu and the BNG, on the other. This architecture leaves very little room for the PSOE to offer Podemos changes in the fiscal package that is voted on this Thursday.
Last Monday, in a negotiation that lasted for hours, the PSOE was able to push forward the opinion of the bill to impose a minimum rate of 15% on multinationals, in order to prevent them from transferring their tax headquarters to other countries. countries of the European Union to pay less taxes. This text, which is actually the transposition of a European directive, is the basis that the Government has used to incorporate a series of amendments with the idea of approving a broader fiscal package that also serves to lay the first stone of the General Budgets of the State.
To obtain support for the text last Monday in the Finance Commission – the step prior to its final approval – the Government committed to the independence partners to carry out in parallel a royal decree that it will approve later and that includes its main line red, a permanent special tax on energy companies.
With that commitment, the PSOE managed to bring the partners together late on Monday to smooth out the reform, but the agreement had small print that the Treasury later revealed in a statement. “The Government wants to clarify that it maintains its agreement with Junts to not tax energy companies that maintain their effective investment commitment for decarbonization,” the note read. Without this fine print, the Government ran the risk of losing Junts’ support for the opinion in the Commission and for the entire text in the plenary session this Thursday.
The Government has limited margin to convince Podemos, which will only vote on the text if it obtains proof that the royal decree of the electricity companies will go ahead. For that, he needs to know the position of Carles Puigdemont’s party, which threatens to overthrow him. Without the assurance that the royal decree will be issued in the future, the Ione Belarra party does not guarantee its votes for this Thursday’s fiscal package. And the Government needs, at least, the abstention of its four deputies.
Late this Tuesday, the socialist part of the Executive admitted that the meetings held with the Podemos leadership throughout the day had not served for the moment to guarantee the four votes in favor of Ione Belarra. Those same sources assumed that the approval of the purples, if it occurred, would not be finalized until well into Thursday and a few hours before the final decision. Although they refused to assume that a left-wing party could even seriously consider overturning the fiscal package that hangs on those votes.
“It is a deeply progressive reform. There are taxes on banks, on multinationals, on the highest capital income… It would be very difficult to explain that a left-wing party like Podemos would destroy all that simply because there is no other tax, that on energy companies, in the terms that “they would want,” say sources close to María Jesús Montero, who emphasize the importance of the vote from a political point of view for the stability of the legislature.
Sources familiar with these conversations with Podemos admit that in the last few hours some political counterparts have been put on the negotiation table that convince Ione Belarra and that would not be directly related to the fiscal measures being discussed. Among other things, Treasury sources point out, because there is no longer room for maneuver to alter anything agreed upon with the rest of the groups and that it has managed to hold up until the key vote like a house of cards.
Regarding the decree committed to ERC, Bildu and BNG to develop a new tax on energy companies, the Treasury recognizes that it is a text on which they are already working to find the magic formula that will satisfy everyone: from Junts, which wants the tax rate disappears, until Podemos, which aspires to keep it the same as until now. However, in Montero’s ministry they reject that the content of this draft has yet been negotiated with any group, and they deny that there has been any decision made on the percentage that electricity companies will be able to receive a tax bonus based on their commitment to promoting the clean energies.
An impact of “5,000 million” due to Montoro’s “failed reform”
A defeat of the Government this Thursday will not only have political consequences. María Jesús Montero warned the PP this Wednesday that its rejection of the fiscal package means, for example, preventing the problems generated by “the failed fiscal reform” of Montoro (the Finance Minister of Mariano Rajoy’s Executive) from being resolved. A problem that “due to sentences [de los tribunales] “I would give away 5,000 million euros this year to large companies.”
To avoid this impact, the agreement that PSOE and Sumar signed on Monday of last week included the proposal to “advance the collection of large companies and groups of companies by limiting their possibilities of deducting losses and repatriated dividends, or the possibilities of consolidating “business groups in corporate tax”. The Plenary Session of Congress may approve this Thursday the amendment that includes this point.
1,500 million from the bank
Other figures that the deputies have on the table are the nearly 1,500 million euros that the temporary tax on financial entities has collected due to the sector’s profit records, both in 2022 and 2023, thanks to the increases in interest rates. reference interest of the European Central Bank (ECB). This 2024, despite the cuts in the official ‘price’ of money in the eurozone since mid-year, interest rates will be on average at maximums or very close to the average level of 2023, supporting another extraordinary year for banks, while many Families have been drowned by their variable interest rate mortgages.
Another 1,000 million from energy companies
Energy companies have also achieved and are achieving historic gains. The large groups in both sectors are monopolistic and use their dominant position to improve the margins of their businesses, as has been seen in this inflation crisis. In addition, oil, electricity and gas companies have captured in their profits a good part of the Government’s aid to alleviate the damage of price increases to families and other companies and the self-employed, such as reductions in consumption taxes (VAT, and special taxes). and discounts per liter of gasoline.
The fight over the extension of the temporary tax on energy companies, which has raised around 1,000 million in 2023, and practically the same amount in 2022, has been transferred to a new Royal Decree-Law. PNV and Junts have aligned themselves for weeks with the interests of Repsol, Iberdrola, Cepsa, Endesa or Naturgy and have blocked this commitment by PSOE and Sumar for the formation of the coalition Government.
7.2 billion from the Recovery Plan
These days, Montero has also lamented that the possibility of combating “hydrocarbon fraud” is at risk. He has also warned that the “equalization of the price of diesel and gasoline” is at stake to continue “promoting the fight against climate change, responsible for the DANA” that Spain has suffered. Or, support “for healthy lifestyle habits”, in reference to the amendment that includes an increase in taxes on tobacco and vaping devices.
But there is an even more tangible threat. If the transposition of the European directive with the 15% floor in corporate tax for multinationals does not go ahead, Spain will be left without the fifth disbursement of 7.2 billion from the Recovery Plan. And, ultimately, it will compromise the General State Budgets (PGE) which should serve to comply with the commitment to the EU to limit the growth of public spending and reduce the budget deficit.
An objective marked by the return of community fiscal rules and which, according to the vice president and all the experts, needs more income if it is to not become a new exercise in austerity, with the consequences for employment and growth. economic that this entails.
Source: www.eldiario.es
