And what if we went on a general strike to deflate personal income tax?

Prices go up, wages go up (less so). And do you know what doesn't stop rising? Tax revenue. 248.326 billion euros between January and September 2026, according to the State Tax Agency, with double-digit growth in some taxes: 12.5% in personal income tax and 7.4% in VAT. And do you know who contributes to this? Inflation, which no one seems to have any intention of stopping. At higher prices, more revenue.

And what about salaries? On the verge of a general strike and elections, the center of the debate should be the deflation of personal income tax. It has not been applied for eleven years. Personal income tax works in brackets. For example, in Catalonia, income between 20,200 and 35,200 euros per year is taxed at a marginal rate of 30%. In the upper bracket, this rate rises to 37%. Since prices are rising, wages are too, year after year. However, the tax scales remain the same.

In order to maintain purchasing power, the most logical thing would be that, if prices rise by 5%, wages should also rise and, at the same time, personal income tax brackets should be updated in the same proportion. Thus, if the first bracket started at 20,200 euros, it would start at 21,210 euros. Well, no. They have not been updated for eleven years. What does this imply? That any salary increase motivated by inflation, instead of fully compensating for it, may end up causing us to pay more taxes. Therefore, the more wages increase to compensate for inflation, the more tax pressure we bear. And this affects everyone: private sector workers, civil servants, and retired people.

It is not about asking for a tax cut, but rather demanding that they do not increase our taxes in a covert way. If the State collects more because prices rise but does not update the personal income tax brackets, it is turning inflation into an additional source of revenue. And this, in a context of loss of purchasing power, is difficult to justify.