Only a handful of privileged can boast in Spain to win more than 601,000 euros a year. There are only 14,738 people within a 23.9 million universe, an economic elite that represents less than 0.1% of the total income tax taxpayers. However, in addition to how many are, it is striking to analyze where they are located: 44.6% of them make the statement in the Community of Madrid. That is, almost one in two taxpayers reside in the capital’s region.
IRPF statistics, published Tuesday by the Tax Agency and corresponding to exercise 2023, leaves no doubt. Madrid has become the great attraction pole of the highest income. Although the region represents only 16.3% of the country’s total taxpayers, it brings together almost half of those who declare more than 601,000 euros per year ,.
This group of lucky, in fact,. In total, the number of taxpayers exceeding this threshold has been reduced from the 15,186 registered in 2022 to 14,738 of 2023, a decrease of almost half a thousand people. However, this descent has not affected Madrid, where the figure has remained intact from one exercise to another, which further reinforces its relative weight as an epicenter thanks to the capital factor and a fiscal sales policy sustained in time in taxes such as IRPF, the equity or that of.
After Madrid are Catalonia, with 21.7% of the richest declarations (3,192 people), and, far behind, Andalusia, which barely reaches 8% (1,185 taxpayers). The rest of the territories are distributed the remaining 25.7%, although statistics do not take into account the Basque Country and Navarra, which have their own fiscal regimes. Territorial inequality in the distribution of these great fortunes is so pronounced that some regions almost disappear from the map: Extremadura only has 41 taxpayers in that section, and La Rioja, 50 people (between them they add only 0.6%).
The differences are maintained in the high sections immediately lower. For example, in the rank that ranges between 150,000 and 601,000 euros per year, 36.2% of the declarants are also in Madrid, compared to 23.9% of Catalonia and 7.9% of the Valencian Community. This group already enters more than 160,000 people, which allows the concentration pattern to better observe: two out of three taxpayers who move a year among these annual thresholds live in only three communities.
This panorama contrasts with the reality of the population of the population. If the set of declarants is observed, it is appreciated that more than 72% recognizes income below 30,000 euros per year. In fact, more than five million people are in very low sections (less than 6,000 euros per year), and more than 17 million do not reach 30,000 euros. Only 5.6% of taxpayers exceed 60,000 euros a year.
Interestingly, although Andalusia is the community with the most declarating in absolute terms (18% of the country’s total), it barely concentrates 8% of the income of more than 600,000 euros. And in the high intermediate section (between 150,000 and 600,000 euros), it does not stand out: it is at the same time as the Valencian Community (with about 8% of declarants). Something similar happens with Galicia, Castilla y León, Aragon or Castilla-La Mancha: together they add millions of taxpayers, but they barely have representation in the more income layers.
Beyond the concentration of the highest income, statistics also reveal a territorial radiography of the low income sections. Communities such as Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia or the Canary Islands have almost 90% of their taxpayers declaring. In Galicia or Murcia the profile is relatively similar. They are territories where the majority of the population moves in salary and modest income sections, which reflects weaker economic structures, with more temporality, lower weight of the technological or financial sector, and a greater dependence on care income or pensions.
At the other extreme, Madrid stands out again: it is the community where the least taxpayers belong to those low sections, with 81% (nine percentage points less than in the most punished territories). It is not that in the capital there are no workers with reduced income – which there are – but that they live with a much higher proportion of taxpayers in medium and high sections.
