Inflation and the plastic tax dilute Sánchez's VAT drop

• Food inflation will worsen further with the tax on plastics from 2023

• The rise in the price of food revives requests to lower VAT, would it be effective?

This Thursday will be the fourth working day in which products such as

are sold in

with a

, after the reduction approved by the Government to alleviate the rise in food prices.

However, the general tendency to raise prices and the technical problems suffered by some merchants

for families.

In some areas, the reduction from 4% to 0% for common bread, bread-making flour, milk produced by any animal species, cheeses, eggs, fruits, vegetables, legumes, tubers and cereals, and the cut from 10% to 5% in VAT on pasta and oils, it has caused a drop in the price when going through the checkout, but in other businesses

or has been

by a rise Of the prices.

The FACUA organization has denounced that several supermarket and hypermarket chains are not passing on the VAT reduction to all affected foods.

The problem is that no matter how much VAT is lowered, this does not prevent

, hence some area has been able to choose to maintain the prices that existed before with VAT and increase its profit margin, which in practice supposes

.

The increase in costs (for example wages, for companies that have raised salaries from day 1, or packaging, for those that use

that are now taxed with a new tax) has led them to

, in addition to the fact that it is a month in which companies traditionally take the opportunity to update the rates.

This trend, motivated in turn by

(the Bank of Spain forecasts that prices will rise another 4.9% on average this year, which encourages companies to raise prices in view of the forecast of higher costs in 2023), it has been able to

by lowering VAT, a measure that is certainly discouraged by both national and international economic institutions because it is indiscriminate for the entire population.

In addition, previous experiences of how lowering VAT affects prices show that

In Finland, VAT on hairdressers fell from 22% to 8% between 2007 and 2012 and, despite the fact that this tax cut was 14 points, prices in that period only fell by 6%, according to a study by the University of California.

are

another of the obstacles that are complicating the drop in prices.

On the one hand, the large distributors that have purchased products for which they have paid a VAT of 4% and 10%, will now have to charge their customers at 0% and 5% respectively, with which they will have to

and wait to settle their accounts with the Treasury.

"If they have bought, for example, at 4%, and they sell at 0%, they will be refunded if they are in the general regime. But they will have to compensate installments until the

in which they

, "they explain to this through sources from the Tax Agency.

This means that in practice they will be financing the State temporarily, which may affect its treasury, but that at the end of the year the impact will have been nil.

These large distributors have already applied the reduction.

EL MUNDO has monitored the price of 9 basic items in the shopping basket in three different supermarkets -

- to verify it and the three surfaces have applied the tax reduction, with differences depending on the food.

will find themselves in a different situation

that, since they are not taxed under the general regime but rather under the so-called special regime of equivalency surcharge, cannot deduct the VAT they have paid.

"

because, as they may be in the famous equivalency surcharge, they pay the supplier the VAT and the equivalence surcharge, that surcharge that could previously be passed on to the final consumer now cannot be deducted, because it cannot be deducted. they have that game and

, explains to this newspaper

, president of the Registry of Tax Advisory Economists (

).

Small stores can then choose to

-if they are concerned about the competition from other stores that have done so- and assume the loss, or

before applying the reduction, with which the client can find establishments in which this tax reduction has not yet been applied.

computer problems

In addition to these problems -the rise in costs and bureaucratic problems- there are other reasons that are clouding the expected discounts in final prices, such as the

by some smaller-scale businesses whose cash registers were programmed to be able to apply three different types of VAT: the super-reduced rate of 4%, the reduced rate of 10% and the general rate of 21%.

"The problem is the speed and lack of foresight, which

, both the companies that sell the products referred to in this package of measures, and the companies that provide technological solutions (... .) The 0% tax rate is not supported by the SII (Immediate Information System) or by TicketBAI; the equivalence surcharge of 0.625% is not supported by the SII or by TicketBAI or by the self-assessment model 303 VAT", laments the Spanish Confederation of Information Technology, Communication and Electronics Companies (

).

The employers' association of information and communication technology companies says that they have

and that the Immediate Information System (SII) of the Tax Agency

indicating that the tax rate is a required field and must be other than 0".

"When we contact the Tax Agency help service via email,

as it was recently approved by the Council of Ministers (a clear example of improvisation, lack of coordination and null interoperability on the part of the Government)", they denounce, and recall that they experienced a similar situation when the

Another drawback is the very

for a company to

which is known in economic jargon as

, which in practice discourages companies from applying price changes very frequently.

Precisely for this reason, some have been able to wait until the beginning of the year to update prices, something that could have coincided in time with this reduction.

Prices will continue to rise

In any case, the discount that customers could receive when making a purchase due to the VAT reduction is not expected to last long, given that a

is expected throughout the year.

According to the Association of Financial Users (ASUFIN), the VAT reduction will mean savings of 3.5 euros on an average purchase that previously cost 33.67 euros, that is, just over

But this discount that can be obtained on some areas will soon be outweighed by the expected price increases

analyst panel

estimates in its latest report on inflation that

compared to December and by

compared to January;

while for

foods they foresee a monthly increase of

in February.

In annual terms, the increase in unprocessed foods -including fruits, vegetables, bread, milk, eggs...- will be 13.6% and 14.6% in the first two months of the year;

while that of the accused will be at 12.6% and 11.3%.

On average, in

,

will become more expensive by

and

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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