Treasury Only Collects Until June 17% Of The Income Foreseen By Tobin Tax

Spain has received in the first half of the year 150 million euros from the first settlement of the tax on financial transactions, known as the ‘Tobin tax’, which represents 17.6% of the 850 million collection planned by the Government for the year as a whole, that is, less than a quarter of the estimate made for all of 2021.

In June, the new tax returns corresponding to the January-May period were entered, which meant a collection until June of 150 million euros, according to the collection report published by the Tax Agency.

The Tax on Financial Transactions, in force since January 16, 2021, is levied on the acquisition of shares in Spanish companies , regardless of the residence of the persons or entities involved in the operation, provided that such companies have shares admitted to trading on a regulated market and a market capitalization value of more than 1,000 million euros.

The first self-assessment of the tax on Financial Transactions, which must be submitted electronically via the Internet at the electronic headquarters of the Tax Agency, was carried out between June 10 and 20 of this year.

After the Ministry of Finance delayed the first settlement twice , the Executive considered that the taxpayers who had to present said tax had already had a “reasonable” time to adapt their systems.

Waiting for the first Google Rate settlement
Along with the ‘Tobin Tax’, the tax on certain digital services, known as the ‘Google Tax’, also came into force on January 16, but its first settlement was made between July 1 and August 2 and, for therefore, it is not yet reflected in the fiscal income of the first semester.

This tax is levied on companies with total annual income of at least 750 million euros and with income in Spain greater than 3 million euros, targeting online advertising services, online intermediation services and the sale of generated data. from information provided by the user during their activity or the sale of metadata.

Although the Treasury had planned an initial collection of about 1,200 million euros (before the pandemic) with this new tribute, it later lowered it to 968 million.

Impact on collection data
Tax revenues in the first half of the year were around 90,475 million , compared to 87,546 million that were collected in the same period of 2020. However, the Treasury has pointed out that the comparison of the first semester is not homogeneous, because in 2021 There are new tax figures and fiscal changes that were introduced in the General State Budgets, such as the aforementioned ‘Tobin’ and ‘Google’ rates.

Thus, the department of María Jesús Montero specifies that the traditional taxes still do not have the degree of performance prior to the pandemic and adds that the new tax figures and fiscal changes, such as the case of the ‘Tobin tax’ or the ‘Google Tax’ , are having an effect on the collection data, although revenues could have been “somewhat lower” than expected to date.