“50 euros more per month is an amount that matters in Spanish families,” said the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, this Monday at the firm with the unions of the uprising minimum salary ascent (SMI), which will be located in the 1,184 euros gross per month in 2025. However, that increase is in doubt in some cases. One day that the new SMI is approved in the Council of Ministers, there is an uncertainty that flies over all the conversations about the increase: if the beneficiaries will have to pay for the first time IRPF.
This Monday is still unknown if the Ministry of Finance, led by the socialist María Jesús Montero, will increase the minimum exempt to make the income statement to the new minimum wage. That is, if their beneficiaries will continue without the obligation to pay taxes, as has happened to date thanks to the adaptations of the minimum exempt, or if they must pay for this tax.
According to government sources, raise the exemption to the new minimum wage of 1,184 euros per month (compared to the current 1,134 euros) supposes for the collection “about 2,000 million euros”, just over a tenth of GDP, and it seems that the Ministry of Hacienda has not yet made a decision in this regard. Therefore, at this time everything indicates that tomorrow Tuesday the new minimum wage will be approved without being known if their beneficiaries will have to pay or not in this tax.
According to the report of the expert commission on the minimum wage, with farm data, 80% of the SMI beneficiaries would remain exempt from paying IRPF even if this limit does not move, due to their personal circumstances, such as family charges. However, another 20%, about half a million people (mainly single without children), would have to pay IRPF.
IRPF is the tax with the highest collection [más de 100.000 millones de euros cada año, por delante del IVA y de Sociedades]. Although 2 billion euros is a significant amount, the debate on whether the people who charge must pay IRPF remains in a context in which capital income, which brings together the richest, pays less taxes than those of work.
Also in which the energy tax that supposed 1,000 million euros to the State has not gone forward. However, this group under the coverage of the minimum wage is increasing Universal so that the Treasury can better know the most vulnerable homes and specific measures can be implemented for them.
That is to say, that the discussion is framed in a “movie” debate on fiscal justice and on the progressivity of the tax, in which part of the government is not comfortable causing them to pay tribute for the first time those who earn less. The second vice president and leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, has reiterated that her position is to raise the minimum exempt, as the government has done so far, although she has stressed that the rise is “competition of the Treasury.”
A “against inequality” tool
Vice President Yolanda Díaz has underlined the relevance of this new increase in the minimum wage, which consolidates a 60% rise since 2018. Díaz has placed the SMI as one of the main levers of the government to reduce inequality, as well as benefits by child In charge of Universal, which defends to add within the coalition (competence of Minister Pablo Bustinduy), and free children’s schools from 0 to 3 years.
The Minister of Labor has insisted that “it matters who governs” and recalled that in the past, since 2007 and 2016, the minimum wage only increased by about 80 euros, keeping the salary soil “below the threshold of poverty” .
Since Pedro Sánchez arrived at La Moncloa, the SMI has risen 60%, from 736 euros per month to 1,184 euros that the coalition government will approve tomorrow. “The question is: what would have happened if we had not done it? It doesn’t matter who governs, ”says Yolanda Díaz.
Upload wages by law before employer resistance
The leaders of the majority unions, Unai Sordo (CCOO) and Pepe Álvarez (UGT), have also highlighted the importance of minimum wage as a tool to increase salaries in Spain, after a decade of intense salary devaluation due to the financial crisis and Given the resistance to the salary increases of the employers once the economic recovery has been settled.
Even against what was agreed with the unions in the 2018 collective bargaining agreement, said Unai Sordo, which recalled that minimum salaries for agreements should have arrived in any case at 1,000 euros in 2020. “If there were Fulfilled “with the agreed, with subsequent increases based on inflation or the new agreement of agreements,” the SMI would be marginal, “said the leader of CCOO. However, the lowest wages did not undergo major changes in many cases and the unions have been more and more supporting the SMI rise that the coalition government has approved to improve the profits of increasingly workers.
“I am radically contrary to tax drops, and radically favorable to progressive personal income tax,” said Pepe Álvarez about the debate of the SMI taxation. In his opinion, the government “has to find the lace” to reveal the minimum exempt to the new minimum wage. “We are not considering that taxes are lowered, but that people who charge the SMI in 2024 are maintained,” he said. “If the government wants to raise, it has extra hours in our country,” said UGT leader.
Source: www.eldiario.es
