Sumar leader Yolanda Díaz criticised the Socialist Party, her ally in a future progressive coalition government, for refusing to extend the current extraordinary tax on banks, which ‘are making a killing’ thanks to their record profits, she said at a Sumar rally.
At the Sumar rally, Díaz, Spain’s acting labour minister, also came down hard on Spanish business leader Antonio Garamendi, who strongly opposes extending the special levy on financial institutions.
On Thursday, Garamendi, president of the business association CEOE, warned that maintaining the extraordinary temporary tax on banks would be a “mistake” as it would reduce the solvency of Spanish banks.
Until February (2023), large energy companies and financial institutions in Spain have paid €1.45 billion in the first instalment of two extraordinary taxes imposed by the government on both sectors.
According to official sources, the windfall tax for energy firms collected €817.4 million and the tax for the banking sector €637.1 million.
The Finance Ministry expects that the annual collection of the two temporary taxes will exceed €2.9 billion by the end of the year.
PSOE ‘aligned with Partido Popular
The likely “number 2” of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, (PSOE/S&D) also had bitter words for the socialists for their refusal to extend the controversial tax.
PSOE “coincides with Partido Popular (PP/EPP) in not taxing banks”, Díaz said on Saturday,
Sánchez’s future vice-prime minister in a coalition executive that should be agreed upon before November’s end did not spare banks negative adjectives.
Despite their differences, particularly on social policy issues, PSOE and Sumar are likely to announce a coalition government agreement this week, ElDiario.es reported on Sunday.
Fresh data on bank profits “overwhelm” with their huge figures, said Díaz, adding that these profits “are being produced in a profoundly unfair way” as they come from a transfer of income directly from the pockets of citizens, she lamented.
“Financial institutions, as a result of the excessive rise in interest rates, are getting richer,” Díaz regretted, adding that Sumar will work to ensure that “banks continue to pay taxes”.
Spain is the fourth country in the EU with the highest percentage of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion. According to figures from 2022, more than one in four Spaniards (26%) were in this precarious situation, although below Romania (34.4%), Bulgaria (32.2%) or Greece (26.3%), data from Eurostat revealed in June.
The leader of Sumar expressed her anger at statements made by the banking employers’ association, who recently complained about the negative impact of this tax on their profits.
‘No tax justice in Spain’
Banks – said Díaz – believed that “if we had not applied the tax to them, they would have achieved profits of up to 67%”.
“We are in a huge inflation crisis, now exacerbated, and the question we have to ask ourselves, and the answer is always the same: who wins and who loses,” she stressed.
Sumar knows “who we represent, whose side we are on; we are not on the side of the banks, we are on the side of the working people of this country”, commented the leader of the platform that brings together 15 progressive groups, adding that it is paramount that “those who have more pay more taxes, for public schools, for dependency, for public health so that our children can have free textbooks”.
She also claimed that “there is no tax justice in Spain” and stressed that the next legislature and PSOE must tackle an “in-depth” tax reform in the Iberian country.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)
