The Catalan government aligns itself with ERC against Montero and defends 100% income tax collection.

BarcelonaThe government clashes with the Ministry of Finance and defends the Catalan government's right to collect 100% of personal income tax. The position of Salvador Illa's administration, in fact, aligns with that of Esquerra, which last week presented the law that should provide protection to the Catalan Tax Agency (ATC) to collect this tax. A rule that does not support the head of the Treasury, María Jesús Montero"We are focused on defending a fair financing model with 100 percent collection of personal income tax and the principle of ordinality," stated Silvia Paneque, Government spokesperson and Regional Minister for Territory, at a press conference following the Executive Council meeting. These words demonstrate a different position from that defended this Monday by the Ministry of Finance, which opposed the possibility of the autonomous communities collecting this tax in full.

Paneque reiterated that the executive's commitment is to fulfill the agreement signed with the ERC (Republican Revolutionary Party) for the investiture of Salvador Illa: "The Government agreed with the ERC to have the capacity to manage and collect taxes with full regulatory authority. This, in full collaboration with the Government of Spain to finance its own services" and participate in the solidarity campaign. In this regard, the Government believes that the position of the Ministry of Finance is within the framework of ongoing negotiations and is confident of reaching a "responsible and fair agreement" that will lead to the "progressive" collection of personal income tax and guarantee "fair financing for Catalonia."

"We do not find it contradictory that there may be other proposals on the table," he noted. In this regard, Paneque added that it is "normal" for each executive to "focus on their responsibilities and objectives" and admitted that the negotiation is "complex." However, the truth is that right now the Ministry of Finance's proposal is not in line with what was established in the investiture agreement. The department headed by María Jesús Montero defended this Monday that its objective is to present a proposal to reform the entire regional financing model so that it is "compatible with complying with the signed agreements and creating a model that can be extended to the rest of the autonomous communities."

This is not the first time that the position of Salvador Illa's executive clashes with that of the Spanish government. It happened this summer with the principle of ordinality. This is one of the issues that the Catalan socialists have been defending for months, that is, that when it comes to distributing resources, Catalonia does not drop in the ranking of autonomous regions in relation to its contributions. Salvador Illa himself did so during the campaign for the last Catalan elections. However, at the last meeting of the Bilateral Commission in July, which was supposed to serve to approve the deployment of the new financing model, This principle was left out of the text signed between the two socialist executives.: It only appeared as a position that Catalonia defends, but without the Spanish government assuming it.

The budgets, at stake

Until the positions on the financing agreement are agreed upon, one of the issues at stake is the Catalan and also the state budgets. The ERC has already stated that it will not sit down to negotiate any of the accounts if steps are not taken on financing, such as the passage of its bill on the ATC. For the moment, the Spanish government has already prepared the macroeconomic framework, the preliminary step toward presenting the budget bill. In Catalonia, Paneque has not yet set a date for when the Catalan government will present its draft, although the goal is for it to be in force by January 1.