The record tax increase suffocates the middle classes

Updated Friday, April 5, 2024-00:02

The fiscal pressure in Spain is suffocating a middle class that was already punished by the worst rise in inflation in decades. Faced with the Government's story, which sets itself up as its protector against the "rich" whom the official discourse habitually demonizes, the reality is that it is burdening these incomes

with the largest increase in tax pressure in the EU. . The middle class thus becomes the major payer of the Executive's plans to increase collection by 12% in 2024. As an example and at the start of the Personal Income Tax campaign, eight million taxpayers in that salary range

.

Starting in 2025, the top part of this group of taxpayers will also suffer another penalty with the so-called

within the framework of the pension reform, an additional contribution that will be applied to salary brackets that exceed the maximum base and will increase as the salary grows.

The Government's argument is that those with greater resources should contribute to a greater extent to the maintenance of the welfare State, a justification that is at the basis of its excessive desire for tax collection, which has implemented

However, the solidarity mechanism will also be assumed by workers whose salaries are around 54,000 euros, which does not represent a buoyant level of wealth but rather a normal income that for a family may even be adjusted taking into account

The increase in tax pressure has a negative impact on the competitiveness of the Spanish economy (ranked 31 out of 38 countries analyzed by the IEE) and goes against the European trend of alleviating tax burdens to boost recovery and propel to companies after two crises, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which have made production costs enormously expensive. Fedea, one of the main economic laboratories of ideas in Spain, warned, in fact, this week that

The surplus collected by the PSOE and Sumar Government with this record battery of taxes has not been used to balance public accounts, but rather to finance the passive classes, with an electoral and unsustainable increase in spending and subsidies.

, forced to pay the bill for an unviable system whose high cost slows down urgent investment in employment and housing policies.