The ordinality that Catalonia demands would cost the State up to 6.1 billion. This demand is part of what unlocked the investiture of Salvador Illa as president and that linked its future contribution to interterritorial solidarity to this principle. Ordinality seeks to ensure that no community receives less money per inhabitant than other autonomies that have contributed less to the system’s common fund. The Generalitat, one of the net contributors due to having greater fiscal capacity, loses relative positions in the territorial ranking to the benefit of regions such as Cantabria and La Rioja, which gain positions after the distribution. The sovereigntist wing wants to end this model and the pact with the PSC, a priori, lays the foundations to open the debate and redesign the scheme. In this tidal wave of possibilities, Fedea yesterday proposed a scenario from which the negotiations can start and that tries to “walk towards ordinality, while proposing “a rationalization of the current distribution pattern of resources.” A series of adjustments to the model and compensation of between 4,800 and 6,100 million euros would be enough.
The study proposes fitting together without breaking the seams of the current model. This principle should guarantee that the distribution of resources is in accordance with the tax capacity of each territory, something that does not always happen with the current scheme. An example is worth explaining this distortion, labeled as “objective and unjustifiable harm” by the Catalan independentists: if the autonomies were ordered by their tax revenues, Extremadura would be in the last positions – therefore, it is one of those that contribute the least to the treasury. common-; . On the contrary, Catalonia has a high tax capacity and receives average resources, while Madrid’s allocation is even below despite being the country’s economic engine.
He is in charge of distributing resources among the communities so that they all have the necessary money per inhabitant adjusted to provide the services they manage, such as education or health, under equal conditions. The system works through different edges. The most important is the common basket in which 50% of what is collected in Personal Income Tax, 50% of VAT and 58% of special taxes ends up, in addition to the totally transferred taxes and other state contributions. All this money, to which the territories contribute about 75% of their income, is then distributed through various funds.
Of all of them, the most important is the Fundamental Public Services Guarantee Fund (which collects funds to pay for health, education and regional social services), which, according to Diego Martínez López, professor at the Pablo Olavide University and author of the report, offers a distributive pattern that, as a general rule, guarantees ordinality. It is the rest of the funds, such as convergence and global sufficiency, that generate the distortions. At this point, Martínez López proposes integrating these secondary funds into the main one, while reducing the percentage of mutualization of income. The document proposes two scenarios, one in which the reduction would be up to 50% and another in which it would reach 65% – the difference would be kept by the regional governments – and which Martínez López considers more effective.
The main beneficiaries of the change would be Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Madrid, in addition to the Valencian Community, traditionally underfinanced. Between the four of them they would earn between 4,819 and 6,138 million, depending on whether the contribution to the common fund is reduced to 50% or 65%. These same amounts would be subtracted from the resources of the rest of the communities of the common regime, with a special impact on Galicia, the Canary Islands, Extremadura and Castilla y León.
These changes, however, would not imply less financing per inhabitant. “No one is going to lose resources in absolute terms,” explains the author of the document. The communities that receive smaller amounts under the reform proposal should be compensated by the State with transfers that decrease over time, so that the final order, once the adjustments to the system are applied, respects ordinality. Of course, “they are going to lose relative positions little by little,” adds Martínez López.
In other words, those that are highest on the list for having more tax capacity would also occupy the first positions in terms of funds distributed from the system. Madrid, the Balearic Islands and Catalonia would thus be at the top in terms of resources from the financing model, respecting their greater fiscal effort, while the Canary Islands and Extremadura, for example, would be below average.
