President Sánchez has found “margin to increase the fiscal pressure” by 60,000 million euros, as indicated in the control session of the congress of deputies. The headlines followed one another immediately: “Sánchez opens the door to more taxes.” As if he had closed it.
How have you found margin? It’s easy. Tax pressure does not measure whether taxes are high or low, nor has it ever done so. It is a ratio that measures tax revenue divided by nominal GDP. Thus, Sánchez criticizes you for taxes, increasing the numerator, but he “revises” the GDP of the past upwards, finding a Murcia GDP and, furthermore, since the denominator is nominal GDP, with more inflation, they raise the denominator and, strike out, they find “margin” to raise taxes. That is to say, they rob you from the numerator part by suffocating you with taxes, they dope the GDP with public spending and debt, which you pay, and they inflate it retroactively and rob you from the part of the denominator with more debt and more inflation, the hidden tax. And “lowers” the tax pressure. It’s obscene.
Of course, fiscal pressure is the indicator that matters to them when raising taxes, but when they reach agreements with the independentists they are very smart and talk specifically about “fiscal effort.”
Spain has more than double the unemployment rate than the EU average, smaller companies, where the majority are micro-businesses, and also more of an underground economy. Additionally, the income of Spaniards is much lower than the European average. Therefore, adjusting for the reality of the Spanish economy, it turns out that the fiscal effort is 18% higher than the EU average, as reflected by the Institute of Economic Studies and the Tax Foundation. In fact, Spain is at the bottom of the OECD in tax competitiveness, in 31st place out of the 38 countries analyzed, eight places below the position it occupied in 2019, when Sánchez arrived and we were already suffocated by taxes. Our taxation is more onerous than in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Japan, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland,… you know, all countries without a welfare state or public services, poor countries mired in the law of the West. Note the irony.
The retroactive review of the GDP has been key to “finding” that “margin” that Sánchez has invented. The INE has increased the GDP from 2021 to 2023 culminating in 1,498 from 1,446 trillion in the previous review. This, compared to the 2019 base, represents a huge increase of 4.2 points, more than double the eurozone average (2.09), much more than Germany (1.92), France (0.64) , Italy (2.63), Belgium (1.03), Ireland (2.19), Portugal (0.74) and Finland (-2.3) according to Eurostat data. If we take the original 2019 GDP as a basis and see the difference between the revised 2023 GDP and the GDP before the two huge revisions of the past carried out, we see that in Spain they have found a Murcia in the past. When calculating the ratio of tax revenue to GDP, the tax hit you have received is reduced with a revised GDP and more inflation. Fascinating.
Use statistical revision of the past to disguise debt and increase taxes further. It would never have occurred to anyone. How progressive. You will believe that taxes have been raised on the rich, but two out of every three euros of increase in income comes from families in direct and indirect taxes and half from refusing to index taxes to inflation, the same inflation. which helps them find room to steal more from you. The poor tax.
On average, Sánchez creates or raises a tax every month. From 2018 to 2024, it has applied no less than 69 tax increases. In addition, during fiscal year 2025 it aims to increase collection by another 7,000 million, a figure equivalent to 371 euros per household, according to the Taxometer of the Juan de Mariana Institute.
An average income in Spain receives a real total salary of 34,989 euros, of which, more than 50% percent of their full salary goes to direct and indirect taxes, savings, insurance and work. Sánchez says there is room.
And why do you want that margin that has been invented to reduce your taxes? The week has reminded us of the wasteland of institutionalized corruption that was implemented from the Ábalos ministry with Sánchez’s knowledge, the billions in inflated contracts while they locked you up and gagged you during confinement. Safe passages for Chavistas, purchases of gold from the drug dictatorship and hydrocarbon fraud to “keep the machine oiled.” The most expensive government in history, with an annual expenditure of more than 5,000 million on Agenda 2030, the same amount on Economic Affairs, more than 10,000 on “Ecological Transition”, 2,000 million to politicize Telefónica, etc. We find evidence of an organized plot that uses institutions to maintain a clientelistic system that uses taxpayers, families and companies as an ATM so that Yolanda Díaz continues spending 44,000 euros annually in restaurants and hotels with a feudal entourage and that the Falcon circulate while the red carpet is laid out for the vice president of a murderous drug dictatorship. Yes indeed. They have found room to plunder you more.