The IRPF: the tax that rises without announcing itself

10.623 million euros has been the tax collection by the Treasury in this year's income tax campaign. We can debate whether it is a lot or a little, but it has grown by 53% compared to last year. And the truth is that it makes perfect sense.

Firstly, salaries have grown more than ever. After the inflation of recent years, wages have been adapting, but taxes have not stopped rising. In other European countries, personal income tax is deflated, meaning the tax brackets are adjusted to inflation. In Spain, they are not. Consider that personal income tax is a percentage of your salary that increases as your income grows. Therefore, the more you earn, the more the State collects. Furthermore, there are more people working than ever before (good news), and therefore, there are also more taxpayers paying taxes.

Secondly, the state needs it. We could ask ourselves: where are these extra 3,000 million that were not collected last year going? To public services, surely not. With public debt at its highest, rising about 3,000 euros every second, and high interest rates, fiscal pressure must remain high. Such high debt interest causes deficits, and therefore, the state only has two options: increase revenue with more taxes or cut spending. In any case, the citizen ends up footing the bill.

Deep down, the non-deflation of income tax is a silent tax increase that mainly affects the middle classes. The tax rate is not noticed by those who earn 500,000 euros a year; it is noticed by those who earn 28,000. Consider that each taxpayer owes, on average, about 84,000 euros of public debt. If there is no will to restructure this debt, fiscal pressure will not stop growing. Perhaps the record collection is not a fiscal success story, but the symptom of a model that needs to collect more and more to sustain spending that no one dares to review.