Sumar proposes hikes to income, corporate and wealth taxes

How much will the next tax hike cost you? Sumar has announced a package affecting personal income tax (IRPF), corporation tax, and wealth tax, while adding two new figures—green and digital taxes—and reforming SEPI (the state industrial holding company) and its 15 public companies. The news, reported by Vozpópuli, comes with the usual wrapper: the rich will pay. It is the fine print that causes sleepless nights.

What’s in Sumar’s proposed fiscal package?

The plan isn’t limited to a single measure. It covers IRPF, corporation tax, the wealth tax levy, green duties, and a digital tax, accompanied by a reorganization of SEPI.

The issue is credibility. Part of the analysis argues that large fortunes have the best tax advisors on the planet and know how to protect their assets, so the increase ultimately falls on the average taxpayer.

Green taxes are mentioned without detailing their scope or who would bear them. The digital tax, however, targets big tech platforms and e-commerce in the debate.

Why does promising tax hikes mobilize votes?

There was a time when raising taxes was done almost secretly, old-style. Today it is part of the electoral product. The uncomfortable question is why announcing higher payments mobilizes voters instead of scaring them off.

The most repeated answer points to arithmetic. If a majority of the electorate perceives they live, directly or indirectly, on public money—pensions, subsidies, public employment—promising more revenue equals promising more distribution. Another, less friendly reading speaks of envy and a narrative where those with more must be leveled down. Both explain something. Neither explains everything.

The most optimistic calculation sees the hike as a nearly symbolic gesture, because large fortunes will find ways to dodge it. The pessimistic scenario is the scary one: that the adjustment ends up in the electricity bill, VAT, or the paycheck of someone who can’t hire an advisor.

Why do pensions appear in every fiscal discussion?

Because, according to the analysis repeated in the debate, it is the line item eating the budget. Pension spending concentrates most public expenditure, and its financing depends on growing debt. In the next decade, the baby boom generation retires, and it is argued that no party touches the issue: that is their vote bank.

The corollary is uncomfortable. Any debate about raising taxes on the rich is, in reality, a debate about keeping the system standing for a few more years. Those collecting pensions don’t want to hear about cuts; those paying them don’t want to hear about more burden. Someone will have to give way. No one says it out loud.

Who ends up paying: the gap between announcement and cash

Here appears the argument that causes the most discomfort. It is claimed that, between direct and indirect taxes, nearly 70% of what is produced ends up in the State’s hands, and that the system cannot take any more.

A detail is repeated. You pay more and receive less: services that don’t improve, waiting lists that don’t drop, bureaucracy that grows. This is the paradox of the average taxpayer, who pays like a rich person and receives like a poor one. There is also circulating suspicion that when talking about large fortunes, the real threshold drops until it reaches the salaried worker who can’t hide a euro.

Civil servants, SEPI, and the unaudited spending

The reform of SEPI and its 15 public companies adds another layer. What do these firms do? How much do they cost? Answers rarely arrive. In parallel, the wage increase demanded by numerous civil servant groups appears as one of the drivers pushing the need to raise more revenue.

A figure is repeated in the debate: nearly four million public employees in a country with a lush administrative structure.

The underlying discussion is not the tax rate, but the spending structure. If most public spending is clientelist—subsidies, entities, advisors, agencies—raising taxes only enlarges the base over which it is distributed. And that distribution, it is argued, is barely audited. Also left hanging is CEOE’s position (the main employers’ association), which defends its own labor reform while the focus is on taxes.

With this landscape, promising a tax hike and winning elections should be impossible. It must be that the voter never feels addressed. The tycoon is always the neighbor.