Before the slogan was: “We are all the Treasury.” Now “The Treasury is the middle class” after the suffocating silent reform that Sánchez has carried out by increasing all kinds of taxes; not indexing the income tax brackets; not reducing VAT; maintaining taxes on fuel and electricity; generating obligations for companies; demanding a solidarity tax for Social Security retirement contributions; … The middle class is drowning, crushed by “la Montero” as an Andalusian flamenco would say.
A middle class that is filling public coffers like never before seen. Because the thing about the truly rich, the wealthy, is another story.
The so-called “great fortunes” know how to defend themselves. In the last case, they “leave” themselves from the country. Recently, there has been a controversy about whether Richard Gere left his residence in Spain for various reasons, one of them fiscal.
I may not be the only one, but when you reside here for more than 183 days, The Treasury considers you a subject of its claws and tries to squeeze you. The famous actor, with a residence in La Moraleja (Community of Madrid) may have other priorities for this transfer, but no one is bitter about saving taxes.
So “feet, why do I want them?” I’m going to Trump land where you pay less. That Republican president who makes everything “progress” beautiful people Hollywood hates.
Money is elusive and it is the mission of the Government of any country to give it conditions to make it work in its territory.
And it’s not that I criticize the “cinema worker,” protagonist of “Beautiful Girl,” for that. Money is elusive and It is the mission of the Government of any country to give it conditions to perform in its territory. If not… well that’s it: it leaves.
Just in case it is not enough, within that quiet tax reform, in April of this year the VeriFactu system was approved. A process that requires all invoices to be passed electronically through the Treasury, something that already happened, but is now becoming bureaucratically complicated.
The system requires adopting software that the Treasury assures will prevent fraud. A slightly absurd excuse because fraud occurs when transactions are made without an invoice or with unregistered documents.
It does not seem that the process is going to complicate the operations of the companies too much. Everyone should use it next year and the software, or the modification of the one they have, is now available.
But the micro-self-employed, those who bill little and either have no employees or only one, will have a new administrative burden, which will surely be charged to them by their management. Their obligation implies that before July of next year they have to update the VeriFactu system.
The micro-autonomous is on the verge of extinction or its transition to “informality”
So “little by little”, slowly but surelythe bureaucratic system of the Spanish Treasury, is drowning the micro-self-employed.
Of course, there are already advisors, consultants, managers on the Internet who offer their services to ensure that all self-employed people, and especially the micro-self-employed, comply with the law, after paying for those services. Because, among other things, the fines for not using VeriFactu can reach 50,000 euros per year. A figure that, many times, is higher than what the micro-self-employed person bills.
So VeriFactu is a micro-autonomous weapon of mass destruction. I don’t understand how their associations, like ATA, haven’t protested. Surely because the micro-autonomous is not usually associative; It is independent and free. He only trusts himself and nothing about the Government, much less the Treasury.
I am very afraid that the micro-self-employed person may choose not to come out into the light of the commercial street or, if he is in it, return to the darkness. In part or totally.
Therefore, VeriFactu is applied because it makes the work of the Tax Agency easier. Which may be reasonable, as long as it is not at the cost of suffocating the micro-self-employed: workers who neither have the protection of the unions, nor the left-wing Government I defend, because they think that they are not their electorate.
The micro-autonomous is on the verge of extinction or its transition to “informality”which is what fiscal darkness is called in Latin American countries. Verifactu will contribute to this.
** JR Pin Arboledas is a professor at IESE.