MadridThe 285 Spanish companies that invoiced the most in 2022 (without distinction of groups) paid a corporate tax rate of 7% on their profits. These are large companies with a turnover of more than 1,000 million and which together recorded profits of 107,236 million euros, as can be seen from the latest statistics on corporate tax that the Tax Agency has published this week If the tax rate is observed in relation to the taxable base, in the case of these 285 companies it soars to 20.1%. In this way, it is close to the general corporate tax rate in Spain (25%).
The taxable amount is the amount on which the amount to be paid for corporation tax is calculated. Therefore, it gives the truest picture of what is paid. However, this tax base comes from applying a series of tax adjustments on the accounting result (the difference between income and expenses). For this reason, if what we want to know is what a company pays on what it earns, it is necessary to observe the effective rate on the profit. As seen above, this results in a much smaller type.
In fact, if the information of these 285 large companies is observed in detail, on average they recorded a profit of 107 million euros in 2022, according to the Tax Agency data collected by the ARA. The accounting result, on the other hand, fell to 91 million euros, while the taxable base stood at 37 million. Different adjustments had been applied, such as exemptions for dividends that a company receives from its subsidiaries abroad, or deductions for activities linked to R+D+I. For some time, the debate among tax experts is whether companies abuse these exemptions. Airef itself has proposed changes to the deductions to improve their transparency.
Unlike what happens in these large companies, companies with a much lower turnover are taxed at a much higher rate on the taxable base, but also on the profits. For example, according to data from the Tax Agency, 144,113 companies with a turnover between 50,000 and 100,000 euros paid corporation tax at a rate of 11% on profit, and 23 % on the taxable base. The same happens in those companies with a turnover of less than 50 million.
Energy and banking
In the middle of the debate on the possible permanence of banking and energy taxes, the pattern of what is happening in the large companies as a whole is repeated when it is broken down by activities. As for the big banks (they are included in financial activities and business services, such as consultancy), the 68 companies with the most turnover linked to this branch paid a rate of 4.5% on profits (21.9% on the taxable base). Energy companies with a turnover of more than 1,000 million (90 companies) paid a rate of 6.8% on profits, and 18.3% on the tax base.
Countdown to taxes
Precisely, this Thursday the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has once again defended the extraordinary taxes on these two sectors. The Spanish government is working against the clock to define new taxes (due on December 31), but it will need the votes of the Congress of Deputies, which is not guaranteed by the PNB and Junts. “Our goal is to convince the parties and have a sufficient majority. If the government does not have this majority, it will not be able to fulfill its vocation”, Montero assumed. The feeling, then, is that the two charges hang by a thread. “They must be concerted taxes in the regional institutions”, PNB’s spokesman in Congress, Aitor Esteban, has once again demanded. This condition that the Basque nationalists put, and that they already agreed with the PSOE in 2023, has started to raise territorial dust. Aragon and Andalusia, communities governed by the PP, not only reject the taxes, but have warned that they will open a legal battle if powers are ceded to the Basque Country.
