Escrivá advocates centralizing taxes to avoid the "nonsense" of competition between Autonomous Communities

MADRID, 20 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, has shown himself on Tuesday in favor of centralizing taxes to avoid the "nonsense" of the autonomous communities competing with each other in fiscal matters.

Escrivá, in statements to Onda Cero collected by Europa Press, has made it clear that this is an opinion "in a personal capacity", which he has already defended in the past, and which comes on account of the decision announced yesterday by the Junta de Andalucía to abolish in that community the Wealth Tax, following in the footsteps of the Community of Madrid.

"It seems absurd to me that the communities dedicate themselves to fiscal competition with each other," stressed the minister, who has considered that eliminating Patrimony is an "extraordinarily regressive" measure just at a time when what is required is to make redistributive policies to the most vulnerable people due to the effects of inflation.

"What the autonomous communities have to do is dedicate themselves to improving the provision of services in Health, in Education... This tax competition between them is an issue that I have never understood", he indicated.

The minister explained that this situation derives from an "improvable" regional financing system, which is what decides the resources that each community must have to provide citizens with fundamental public services such as Health and Education.

In Spain, he specified, it was decided to go to a system of assignment of complete taxes and tax brackets, although he has been in favor of the Australian model, where the allocation of regional resources is decided based on the effective expenditure per capita in each one of the public services that is generated.

"It is a much finer model. On the other hand, in Spain we are very installed in this transfer of taxes that has a lot of tradition, but that I, personally, do not like and that generates these drifts as undesirable as the ones we are seeing these days ", has underlined.

For the minister, this is a "fundamentally technical, not political" debate. "Citizens understand that the autonomous communities play a central role in the provision of Education, Health or Dependency services and that is already so important...", he concluded.