The regions of the PP, banks and electric companies reactivate their fiscal war with the Government after the electoral result
The electoral victory of the Popular Party that the polls predicted drew a context in which banks, electricity companies and the regions governed by the PP itself were going to reconsider their respective positions in the fiscal war they had with the Executive of Pedro Sánchez. The candidate Alberto Nuñez Feijóo had been a bit ambiguous with the future of taxes on banks and energy companies, but from the popular formation it was pointed out that they would try to reach some kind of understanding with both groups of companies. And what seemed completely certain is that the tax on Great Fortunes would be eliminated, which would entail the end of homogenization and the attack on regional fiscal powers that, in the party's opinion, this figure entails.
But the result of the general elections on July 23 has blown up this approach, and all the affected parties are already reactivating their confrontation with the possible Executive led by Pedro Sánchez.
In the communities governed by the PP they maintain the same position: that applying a tax at the national level on the Great Fortunes that invalidates the bonuses in the figure of Patrimony is unconstitutional. That invades the tax powers that the Constitution grants to the autonomies, and for this reason both the Community of Madrid and Andalusia have already appealed the figure before the Constitutional Court. “We are going to continue with the battle, without a doubt,” confirm regional sources from the Popular Party, with which the fight with María Jesús Montero, if she remains as Minister of Finance, is assured.
On the part of the electric companies, and also the oil companies because the Executive's fiscal hardening also falls on these companies, Cepsa exemplified last week what is the position of the affected companies. “It is a poorly designed extraordinary tax that has had a significant impact on our results and on cash generation,” said Maarten Wetselaar, CEO of the company, during the presentation of results.. What's more, Cepsa pointed directly to the Government for its bad semi-annual data. Repsol, Iberdrola, and Endesa already denounced the figure in February, and that process is ongoing.
And as far as the banking figure is concerned, sources from one of the four big consultancies (the so-called Big Four, Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG) state that “it might seem more logical, now that the rise in interest rates continue, that the tax be maintained if what the PSOE really wants is to carry out policies to help the most vulnerable». What were previously extraordinary benefits, he adds, could become the new normal. In this sense, the expert understands that “if the Government is intelligent, it will reconfigure the text” of the norm so that it cannot be rejected by the courts due to a defect in its wording, as seems to be the case at the moment.
All national entities have already appealed this rate before the Justice and the sector trusts that its resources will go ahead. The entities, for now, have resigned themselves to paying the tax but they estimate that, in a couple of years, they will recover that money with interest. The CEO of Banco Santander, Héctor Grisi, stressed last week that it is “a discriminatory tax” and demanded from the next Executive “clear rules” in terms of taxation.
Something more extensive was the head of CaixaBank, Gonzalo Gortázar, who openly complained that banks pay more money in taxes than other companies, 40% over 25% of Companies. Why do we penalize financial institutions? Why do they have to pay so much money? “He asked himself during the presentation of the bank's semi-annual accounts, in which his profit shot up 36%. The counselor of the entity believes that this tax “harms the country”, and asked to focus the debate first on whether the tax itself makes sense before beginning to discuss whether it should become permanent.