The Government postpones the tax on airline tickets: "This is not the time"

• Taxation. Hacienda wants to introduce taxes on airline tickets and single-use plastics
• Environment: The Government will establish a tax on plastic packaging to reduce its use

The green taxation of the Government of Pedro Sánchez, which includes the recently announced tax on plastics or the increase in the tax on diesel, also includes a figure "on air transport." In fact, the so-called plane ticket tax was subject to public consultation at the same time as the levy on single-use plastic packaging. But, unlike what happened with the figure announced on Tuesday by the fourth vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, the Government has decided to postpone the air transport tax for now .

" This is not the time, " sources from the Treasury point out, stressing that this decision does not mean that the Government rules out applying the tax, but that, given the current circumstances, there would be no point in creating it. The volume of air traffic is practically nil and there are still many doubts about what the future of air transport will be.

And, in addition, in this context a new tax would make recovery of this sector even more difficult, although this last point could be of less relevance to the Executive since it does not renounce applying a significant tax increase in Companies, Personal Income Tax and Heritage, in addition to creating the Tobin tax and the Google tax, or tax on certain digital services, which will be discussed precisely today in Congress. Just yesterday, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, reaffirmed when asked by Vox that the objective of the coalition executive is to apply the fiscal plan that was signed in the government agreement.

The spirit that guides these tax increases, and that Montero wants to translate into next year's General State Budgets (PGE), is that "whoever has more, pays more." However, if you go to the collection figures that the Sánchez government reflected in the first budget plan that it sent to Brussels, this statement is somewhat bare. And if we add to this the provisions of the new tax on plastics, what we find is that, in reality , green taxation will contribute much more than increases in personal income tax to higher incomes or an increase in wealth.

According to the Treasury estimates, the green tax system that at that time only included the increase in the diesel tax will contribute 670 million euros a year. For his part, Ribera estimated that the impact of the tax on plastics will raise just over 720 million when it is fully active, which now totals almost 1,400 million . The data will only fall behind the 1,770 million that the tightening of Companies will provide and it would still have to be added what the future figure can contribute on airline tickets.

A separate mention deserves the tax on the wealthy that Podemos insists on creating and that the finance minister has already ruled out, more or less clearly, pointing out that the tax system already has the necessary tools. However, the Vice President of the Government, Pablo Iglesias, has made this tax a personal commitment in which there is also part of a political challenge to his fellow Socialists in the Cabinet, and if his estimates are followed, the figure would provide some hardly credible 10,000 million a year .

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