Spanish tax inspector: the state plunders the middle class

Tax agency plunders the middle class: a tax inspector's scathing indictment

The diagnosis comes from inside the machine, and that is why it stings. A tax inspector from Spain's Agencia Tributaria, one of those who see revenue collection from within, has put it in black and white that the Spanish state is neither social-democrat, conservative nor liberal: it is a structure for plundering the middle classes. The tax system, he argues, has a single objective: to steal as much as possible from the productive part of society.

The three pillars of the indictment

The text is short but sharp. First: the productive taxpayer is the prey. Second: the tax agency concentrates the best of the state's technical and human apparatus, with the best professionals and the best computers, while the rest of the administration is reduced to auxiliary services. Third: the money does not evaporate; it goes to two clearly defined groups, the ruling class and a clientelist network that the text only half spelled out. To top it off, the detail that stings: there are no budgets, and that is read as proof that the plundering is done through taxes and debt, without needing any accounts.

The reactions to the diagnosis come as no surprise. Some ask for solutions and get no answer; some point out that the rest of the European Union works just as badly; and some reduce the model to an image: more kilometres of motorway, more roadside ditches. The phrase sums up the suspicion that public works are not a service but a mechanism for handing out contracts to friends. Nor is there any shortage of people pointing to the most talked-about sustainability plan: half a million arrivals a year to pay for pensions, a flawless plan that nobody dares to formalise in full.

The correct diagnosis is useless if the causes are not attacked. There, the analysis goes blank. As long as nobody names them, the system will keep collecting and distributing among its two usual beneficiaries. Perhaps that is the ultimate cause: the plunder does not produce awkward questions, it produces complacency.