MADRID, 28 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The PSOE and Sumar have revealed in recent days their discrepancies in matters of taxation and transport, all of this in the run-up to the negotiations of the General State Budgets (PGE) that the Treasury wants to present in March so that they come into force. before summer.
The ministers have begun to appear this week in Congress to explain the general lines of their respective departments and the Sumar spokespersons have not hidden their disagreements and have even led to head-on clashes with the socialist wing of the Government.
In fiscal matters, the main disagreement between the Government partners comes from the extraordinary tax on energy companies. Both the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, and the third vice president and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, want to make the tax permanent, but allowing companies to deduct part of the tax through green investments.
“We are frontally opposed,” warned Sumar’s Economy spokesman in Congress, Carlos Martín, during María Jesús Montero’s appearance at the Finance Commission.
In the opinion of Martín Urriza, both the energy tax and the banking tax can present a “modulation” with respect to their initial design as long as extraordinary profits are not produced in the industry.
Something that, in his opinion, is not happening at the moment. For this reason, the spokesperson rejected the idea of allowing deductions for investments, which have to be executed by companies “if they do not want to be left behind in the market and progress.”
But in addition, Sumar has proposed to the PSOE a new tax on large inheritances, another “smart” tax in the food chain when “excessive” margins occur, eliminate the VAT exemption for private university education, a reduction in this same tax to hairdressers and veterinary establishments and a “super-reduced” VAT for diapers and gluten-free products.
With the tax on large inheritances, the group led by Yolanda Díaz wants to avoid the ‘fiscal dumping’ produced by the bonuses that some autonomous communities led by the PP may offer through the wealth tax. Regarding the “smart” tax in the food production and distribution chain, this would act if the chain’s profit margins continue to be above those of 2019.
However, the Minister of Finance pointed out that none of these taxes were in the Government agreement signed between the coalition partners.
“Everything he has proposed has been new to me,” said Montero upon leaving his appearance in the Lower House. For this reason, María Jesús Montero preferred not to comment on the possibility of approving any of these taxes, which the plurinational group will want to negotiate in the next Budgets.
Aside from taxation, PSOE and Sumar have also maintained disagreements over the works on the northern expansion of the Port of Valencia and the expansion of the Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas airport.
In his appearance on Wednesday in committee, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, defended the operation of the Port of Valencia against criticism from Sumar who insisted on calling for it to be paralyzed because they consider it “unsustainable” and “unnecessary.”
In his opinion, the operation is limited to filling in a contour dock that already exists and no possible environmental damage is evident. In fact, he assured that with the expansion more than 1,000 daily trucks that currently circulate on the V-30 highway could be freed up.
However, the Compromís deputy who is part of Sumar, Alberto Ibáñez, criticized that the expansion is “unsustainable” from an environmental point of view and “unnecessary” from an economic and foreign trade perspective. In his intervention in committee, Ibáñez even told the minister that “there will be no expansion of the Port of Valencia”, to which the head of Transport responded that the operation will continue as long as the courts do not say otherwise.
Added to this is a new discrepancy due to the recently announced expansion of the Barajas airport. The person who will be Sumar’s spokesperson in Congress, Íñigo Errejón, described the project as “economic and ecological absurdity,” as it means “returning to past models.”
Through the social network “fast and ambitious” in the ecological transition.
Óscar Puente mocked these statements in a message published on the social network: “Íñigo wants to travel to Buenos Aires or Hong Kong by train. We are working on it, but at the moment it is a little difficult,” the minister stressed.
