Spain quenches its thirst for leisure: tax collection on alcohol shoots up more than 40%

Tax collection continues to grow very strongly thanks to the increase in activity and consumption, inflation and also as a consequence of wage increases with which it is a question of coping with the rise in prices.

So much so that, in the accumulated of the first four months of the year, the Treasury has already entered 85,922 million euros, a figure that had never been reached before in April and that represents

compared to the same period of 2021 .

The tax that contributes the most, as usual, is personal income tax, although it is closely followed by VAT.

But analyzing the data more in depth, an increase as powerful as it is striking is observed: the one

, which “continued with the trend of high growth”, explains the Tax Agency in its monthly report published yesterday.

"43.8% in the year compared to 36% registered until March," he deepens.

It is, specifically, two figures: the special tax on Alcohol and Derivative Beverages and the one that taxes beer.

Especially intense is the accumulated rebound of the first figure, which grows almost 60% and reaches 258 million euros accumulated by the 90 million of the second taxes.

And if you go to the accumulated consumption, data also offered by the Tax Agency itself, it is found that citizens

.

In the first three months (this data is updated with a month of delay compared to the collection) the consumption of beer subject to the tax was

.

It exceeds the figure for 2021 and is slightly below that recorded in 2020, a period that was affected by confinement only in its last part.

The consumption of what is called pure alcohol amounted to

, above the figures for 2021 and 2020, in line with that of 2019 and also higher than that accumulated in the first quarter of 2017. The rates applied are very similar in all those years, being much higher that applied to alcohol than to beer.

And inflation, in this case, does not affect, sources from the Tax Agency explain, because they are taxes that revolve around product volume.

In addition, these consumption figures

, nor massive events that were not held in previous years and in which consumption skyrockets, such as the April Fair in Seville or even San Isidro in Madrid.

That is, it seems very likely that the consumption and collection figures will continue to grow strongly, thus evidencing the thirst for leisure that was and continues to be in Spain.

The salary increase

Returning to that great contribution that the IRPF and VAT are making, the Income Tax already accumulates revenues that exceed 37,000 million, while VAT is at 33,400 million and

.

Treasury highlights that the good behavior of collection as a whole is due to "growth in employment, the increase in wages and pensions with the consequent rise in the effective rate and the improvement in spending accompanied by price increases."

The Tax Agency thus cites the aforementioned factor of the

, that is, that the wage increases that workers are registering in the face of high inflation, in turn, increase income from personal income tax.

This supposes a

because, on the one hand, these salary increases hardly equal inflation and, therefore, there is a loss of purchasing power;

and, on the other, workers who register an increase must pay more for income tax.

For this reason, there is a broad consensus in the economic sphere in stating that adapting the rate to inflation is not lowering taxes but not doing so, as the Treasury has decided to do, is a covert increase.

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