Barely 24 hours after the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, defended the Catalan quota as constitutional in Congress but once again ignored the explanation of the real scope of the agreement and its key points, she has gone a little further and has specified that the agreement sealed this summer between the PSC and ERC for the “singular financing” of Catalonia contemplates the transfer of the total income tax collection to the control of the Generalitat, with the “vocation of doing the same with more taxes” throughout over time.
In statements to the media before presiding over the central event of the 95th Anniversary of the Cádiz Free Zone, the vice president did not want to confirm whether this “vocation” will end with the delivery of 100% of taxes to Catalonia, and has limited herself to refer “to the signed agreement, which says very clearly what the vocation of self-government that certain territories have and “how we can accompany that vocation of self-government. What is being talked about is that, gradually, over the years, the objective is to be able to collect the majority of the taxes that are collected in Catalonia.”
However, he wanted to point out that what is “on the table right now corresponds only to personal income tax, which is what appears in the agreement. And everything that does not appear in the agreement is neither agreed upon nor decided, and will have to be with the rules that we put in place when we finish developing and specifying all the extremes that are contemplated there”. In the same sense, he added that “what you have read in the agreement literally speaks of a date for what personal income tax means, and that over time there is the expectation of being able to transfer all taxes to the Generalitat. .
The minister, who explained more to the press than in her entire appearance yesterday, insisted that “it has not been decided how many taxes will be paid”, nor the time frame in which the rest of the transfers will be carried out”, so “This agreement will have to be developed with norms and laws that will descend to the different levels. We will have a lot to discuss, a lot to agree on in bilateral and multilateral negotiations.” But he wanted to make it clear that “the agreement is explained by reading it, and the agreement says everything.”
This Catalan economic agreement agreed between the PSC and ERC contemplates, for the moment, an annual transfer of up to 13.2 billion euros from the common treasury of the State to the Catalan Treasury, which would mean that, while waiting to finalize the details of the pre-agreement, The Generalitat would increase its homogeneous financing up to 50% and its medium-term financial effects would point towards an annual transfer of between 6,600 and 13,200 million euros, which would increase the homogeneous financing of the Generalitat between 25% and 50%, according to The Foundation for Applied Economics Studies (Fedea) has confirmed.