Those in Spain grew in 2024, until they touch the. Although all the great taxes – the IRPF, the VAT, societies and the specials – contributed their grain of sand to get these numbers, the one that did the most was the one that affects companies, with an advance of 11.5% compared to 2023 and a collection of 39,096 million euros. It is the highest figure recorded by this tax figure for almost two decades, since to find similar levels you have to go back to the period prior to the outbreak of the real estate bubble.
In 2006, revenues from the 37,000 million euros, to climb at 44,800 million an year later. However, the collection sank more than 60% from the financial crisis of 2008, and in the toughest years of that long recession they barely reached 16,000 million euros to then recover very slowly. A similar story glimpsed in 2020, the year of the health crisis linked to COVID-19. Then, business revenues fell to 15,800 million, although the posterior rebound has been faster and bulky.
All this has also occurred despite a context marked by a series of regulatory and management changes that have operated against public income in 2024, according to the Tax Agency in its monthly collection report, published on Monday, from which all data is extracted.
According to the agency under the Ministry of Finance, the growth of the collection in 2024 “was limited by the impact” of a series of regulatory and legal modifications that, in the case of the Corporation Tax, subtracted almost 2.2 billion euros in resources. In this coup to the income, the cancellation of the company tax reform highlights the PP government in 2016 ,. Without these, the increase in public income in this tax would have been 18%, almost seven points more than the final data. Therefore, the Tax Agency provides that the net benefits of companies, which are those that remain after accounts with the Treasury, grow more than 13% in 2024.
The benefit declared in fractional payments (which function as an advance that companies pay to the Treasury) by large companies and groups grew more than 12%, reaching almost 15% in the first and just over 11% in the seconds. “The increase of these fractional payments (about 11%) was in line with those benefits and, logically, being the most weight component within the tax, determined the results of the entire figure,” the agency reasons.
Regarding IRPF, income advanced 7.6% during the past year, to 129,408 million. This tax, however, was also affected by regulatory changes, which meant a loss of about 3.2 billion, calculates the agency. In this way, without this impact, “the increase in income would be 10.2%, a figure compatible with a growth of household income around 8.5% and the increase in the effective type derived from the increase in wages and pensions.”
As detailed by the agency, the growth of income was based, fundamentally, on the increase in employment and wages and the favorable evolution of withholdings from the returns of work and furniture capital. However, other agencies, such as the Bank of Spain, the Fiscal Authority or Funcas, have recently highlighted the impact that inflation has had on income and, a phenomenon that occurs when the tax scale is not updated with the CPI. The agency, however, puts the focus on a series of measures implemented by the Government such as, which have subtracted almost 1.5 billion from public coffers.
As a curiosity, the report includes a loss of income of almost 600 million in the solidarity tax of the great fortunes, by the autonomous communities in order to stay in their coffers with money that, otherwise, would have gone to the central administration.
With regard to indirect taxes, VAT revenue grew by 7.9%. On the one hand, the final spending subject to the tax increased around 6%. On the other, until reaching the increase in income, we must look at the progressive elimination of type sales in energy products, in addition to the existence of other measures with positive impact on income (postponements, income and extraordinary returns), according to the agency. In total, all these elements raised the collection at more than 1.7 billion.
For its part, the growth of income from special taxes was 6.6%. It must be taken into account, the report stands out, which in 2024 the electricity tax was recovered, “residual since September 2021 when the type from 5.11% to 0.5% to compensate part of the price increase” was reduced. In addition, in 2024 there were 12 months of the non -reusable plastic containers tax, introduced in 2023. “If the collection is corrected for these two reasons, which meant just over 1,000 million, the increase in income would have been only 1.7%,” says the agency.
