Taxes will stop dropping as from next year promised Mariano Rajoy this morning. It seems he suddenly realised in the shower this morning that next year is an election year.
He has a lot more reforms up his sleeves, he promised, although he refused to be drawn on details.
His finance minister quickly rushed out a statement assuring people that IVA won’t drop, and he’s talking about income / corporate taxes.
A cut on income tax is widely expected to be announced for 2015.
Meanwhile, the 22,000 largest companies and trust funds in Spain are looking at a much higher tax rate this year – a series of deductions for large entities are being abolished, rising their effective tax rate on profits from 19% to 30%.
Tax rates are very important, of course, but I think the problem goes much deeper than just getting the right rate.