2023-05-21 11:00:17
Four days later than last year. Next May 25 will be the day on which, on average, ‘we will stop paying taxes y social contributions to public coffers, both individuals and companies. In 2022 it was the 21st of the same month.
On the 25th, taxpayers will have settled their debts with the public coffers. Although it is not the most scientific way – taxes are not paid in a homogeneous way by all citizens and the sum of all the collection includes individuals and companies – it is the most illustrative to understand what portion of the total wealth of a country ‘eat’ the tributes.
If we dedicate all our income to the payment of taxes from January 1, applying that calculation, in 2023, it will take 145 days to be at peace with the public coffers, compared to 141 last year.
This symbolic day is what the liberal economists they call the day free of taxes or ‘tax freedom day’. The more you go into the exercise, the greater proportion is tax collection on total wealth that the country generates. In fact, there are some liberal ‘think-tanks’ who calculate that the date in Spain arrives in the month of June and others, even in July.
In any case, the date may vary as does the review of the data estimated by the Government and sent to Brussels in its stability program updatesince the economy is not static. It is, therefore, a piece of information that should be taken as a reference for the evolution of the tax burden.
Last year, for example, the collection was more than 23,000 million higher than what had been expected in the State Budget. In addition to the dynamism of the economy, which exceeded the most optimistic estimates, the escalation experienced by the inflation which, in the year as a whole, reached an average of 8.4%, although the Government assures that this was not the main factor.
That the day is delayed compared to other years may be due to the economic growthwhich generates employment and, therefore, more taxpayers -either they have to pay more- or else increase taxes or revenue from the fight against tax fraud.
crisis and bonanza
in the stages of crisiscollection tends to plummet, thereby lowering the tax burden and increasing the portion of the pie that goes to public spending, so the deficit is enlarged, as happened in 2020 due to the pandemic. In Spain, despite the recessionfrom 2012, with the increase applied in personal income tax with the arrival of the PP to the Government and the subsequent increases in VAT, the tax burden increased until it starts to drop from 2016 with the personal income tax reform. Then she started back up the path.
The data on Spain, which differs between regions, with a lower weight of taxes in Madrid than, for example, in Catalonia, are still far from the average for the European Union (EU) and the euro zone, which places the day off tax in mid-June. The US is one of the countries in which that date is earlier and it is reached this year on April 18, almost a month earlier than in Spain. It is also a country that is characterized by a lower weight of public spending and, especially, of social spending.
A study of Molinari Economic Institute, France; and ‘Americans for Tax Reform Foundation’ placed the date in Spain on June 8 in 2021 and Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and Austria as the EU countries in which that date arrives later, given the weight that taxes have on the economy, with the July 3, 7, 16 and 19 in the last two cases, respectively.
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The other side of the coin is the weight of the public spending. The State will continue spending until June 22, that is, one day earlier than last year, according to the update of the 2023-2026 stability program sent by the Government to Brussels. The trend in the expenditure section will be downward, although it will stagnate on June 18 between 2024 and 2026, according to government forecasts.
The weight of taxes, on the other hand, will go deeper into the month of May until it reaches the 28th of that month in 2026, according to the same estimates of the Executive. that trend it will not be due so much to a general increase in taxes as to economic dynamism and the fight against fraud, according to the interpretation of the Government. And he rejects that a good part of the increase is due to inflation.
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