Sumar leader wants to end ‘tax injustices’ in Spain

To achieve a fairer country, the government should do more to end “fiscal injustices” and pave the way for “economic democracy in terms of public revenues”, Spain’s Labour Minister and leader of coalition partner Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, told Euractiv’s partner EFE in an exclusive interview.

As part of the ongoing negotiations between Sumar and the PSOE to approve the 2024 budget, Díaz, who is also deputy prime minister and one of the five Sumar ministers in government, urged her Socialist colleagues from Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE to implement some key reforms to achieve greater tax fairness, EFE reported.

Among them, Díaz cited the abolition of the VAT exemption for private education and health care or luxury goods and the application of the same VAT rate to them as to other everyday goods.

Another of Díaz’s requests to her partner in government is that capital income should pay higher rates of personal income tax (IRPF) than earned income.

“We also want key factors in a tax that is regressive and unfair, such as VAT, to be changed (…). We are somehow financing the attendance of public schools, I am not talking about the ‘concerted’ school (a mixed public-private formula). Why is private health care in Spain taxed at 0%? Is that fair?” said Diaz.

At the same time, the Sumar leader also pointed out that in the current global climate emergency, it makes no sense to exempt international air tickets from VAT.

According to the minister, all these (negative tax) circumstances mean that there is an unfair distribution of wealth in Spain and that Spanish society is very unequal, with a “median salary of €1,545 gross per month”, she added.

Díaz also admitted that her party and Sanchez’s PSOE disagree on several tax matters, such as whether the current temporary tax on banks should be made permanent, an idea supported by Sumar but not by the Socialists.

(Matilde Martínez | EFE)