Catalonia, the least attractive community for companies due to its high taxes

Catalonia, the least attractive community for companies due to its high taxes

The Basque Country and Madrid lead the Autonomic Index of Fiscal Competitiveness as they are the ones that retain more professionals due to their fiscal advantages, with more than 2.2 points of difference with the last

  Companies and professionals are reluctant to develop their economic activity in Catalonia, which occupies the last position in the Fiscal Competitiveness Index 2018 presented this Wednesday in Madrid, due to its lower capacity to compete to retain and attract companies due to the high number of autonomic taxes additional to those of the Central Administration, which triple the average of own taxes of the other communities.

  Thus, although Catalonia has risen a few tenths with respect to 2017, when the penultimate of the table was placed, it is the only community that is below the one approved in the index, with a score of 4.93 out of 10. The penultimate this year is Aragón, which approves by the hair, with 5.1 points out of 10.

The report prepared by the Union of Taxpayers reveals that the most competitive this year were the Basque Country and Madrid, with lower taxation in relation to the others. Specifically, Vizcaya (the Basque provinces are measured separately because each has a different taxation), leads the index with 7.6 points out of 10, followed by Álava, Comunidad de Madrid and Guipúzcoa.

The fifth -third if measured by communities- is for La Rioja, which moves to the Canary Islands and down to the sixth position, a "favorable" note taking into account the fiscal particularities of the archipelago.

The ones that go down the most, according to the author of the report, the economist Cristina Berechet, are Asturias and Navarra. The Principality falls four places, being antepenultimate, with an approved scraping (5.27 points); while the Autonomous Community, despite having an Economic Concert, moves from seventh place to tenth, with 5.83 points.

The positive side is Extremadura , which is the community that climbs the most in the ranking and goes from being the last of the table in 2017 to the fifteenth place in 2018. Berechet has highlighted the reform of the Inheritance Tax this last year, although assured that the region needs to "profoundly" reform that of Heritage and Income Tax.

Tax self-government

"Low taxes help development and welfare, while high taxes cause stagnation and unemployment," said Juan Pina, president of the Taxpayers Union. Pina explained that what is needed is "freedom" so that all communities can compete with each other fiscally and stop making "an eternal transfer of funds."

Therefore, although they have not been favorable to creating a quota system for all communities, the president of the Taxpayers Union has been a supporter of more intraregional fiscal competition, with a "full fiscal self-government" for all communities , not only for two, because it is an "unfair" system. Of course, has assessed that along with this measure would have to adopt elements that eliminate the overlap between the different levels of administration.

Spain, uncompetitive

To complete the table, Andalusia (ranked 13th), the Balearic Islands (11), the Valencian Community (16), Galicia (14) and Murcia (12) are in the middle part. The highest are Cantabria (9), Castilla-La Mancha (8) and Castilla y León (7).

Internationally, the Tax Foundation recently launched the 2018 edition of its Annual Fiscal Competitiveness Index, in which Spain ranks 27 out of 35 OECD countries . Its president, Scott Hodge, explained in the presentation in Madrid that "the luck" of Spain is that its closest neighbors, France and Portugal, have "even less competitive" tax systems. In addition, he warned that the index was published before the Government presented its new budget plan , with tax proposals that "could harm the classification of Spain next year."