Personal Income Tax collection: the first stage of financing

BarcelonaIf you ask a leader of Junts or Esquerra how long they think the Spanish legislature will last, they remain silent. They say they recognize that the legislature is in the hands of the judges and that the worst is yet to come. In other words, September could be short compared to June, when the Cerdán and Leire cases broke out, the Attorney General's case was prosecuted, and the indictment of Minister Félix Bolaños was processed. wait and see and some inconsequential rhetorical inflammatoryism.

The deepest crisis for the Spanish government since Sánchez took office has come at the worst possible time for the ongoing negotiations on the one-off financing for Catalonia, agreed between ERC and the PSC following the investiture of Salvador Illa. Financing that, despite what is written in the pact, will undergo a metamorphosis in an attempt to reach a successful conclusion. If it ever does, since the legislature in Congress could end abruptly at any moment.

Regardless of what is agreed upon in the bilateral committee on the 14th—which the PSC has insisted on holding—the negotiation of the new financing system between ERC and the PSOE has two distinct plans. On the one hand, the negotiation over how much extra money the State should inject into the system to ensure respect for the principle of ordinality—key for Catalonia—and on the other, the collection of taxes by the Catalan Tax Agency (ATC). While the former is extremely complex because there is resistance within the plurinational majority (Compromís will not endorse a model in which the financing of the Valencian Country is not fixed), the latter has the potential to move forward more quickly. However, although the ERC-PSC pact speaks of assuming the collection of all taxes by the Generalitat, it will only discuss personal income tax.

Right now, the ATC does not have the power to collect income tax. It needs legal protection. Therefore, what ERC is prioritizing in the negotiations with the PSOE is changing the Lofca and the resulting legislation to add that Catalonia can also collect this tax. This leaves the entire model for a second phase, since it doesn't involve money and the plurinational majority could endorse it in the short term, provided, of course, that the PSOE holds on to the Moncloa.

In Parliament, many issues are often voted on in succession and in groups, sometimes with erroneous results due to the confusion generated by the system. This is what happened this Tuesday in the Education Committee, where Junts voted in favor of a PP hearing proposal for a meeting with a representative of the Spanish-speaking Assembly for a Bilingual School, while the PSC abstained.

The political parties are trying to innovate their events, and Barcelona en Comú, which is holding its congress this Sunday, has decided to create a collaborative playlist on Spotify to liven up the party. Among the artists chosen by members are Jennifer López, Pitbull, Calle 13, Amaia, Bad Gyal, and Sindicato de Pueblo de Vilamajor.