Introduction

In 2018, tax revenues reached 208,685 million euros, which represented a growth of 7.6% . This increase is affected by the change that occurred in mid-2017 in the VAT filing dates of taxpayers under the Immediate Information Supply (SII) system and which shifted income from 2017 to 2018. If this shift is corrected, revenues would have grown by 5.4% .

The main causes of income growth were two: the increase in tax bases and the positive results of the annual personal income tax declaration.

The tax bases of the main taxes grew by 6.1% in 2018, almost one point above the growth recorded the previous year, and exceeding in level, for the first time, the maximum reached in 2007. Although the trend in real activity was downward throughout the year (as witnessed, among other indicators, by real GDP, membership, deflated total sales of Large Companies and the number of wage earners in them ), in nominal terms the profile was different, especially with regard to the tax bases. Thus, in the second half of the year there was, on the one hand, additional growth in income thanks to the increases in salaries and public pensions approved together with the 2018 Budget in July and the improvement in benefits, and, on the other, a impulse of the bases linked to spending as a consequence of price increases, especially in energy products.

The result of the evolution of the bases was an increase in income from labor withholdings, from fractional payments in Corporate Tax and from VAT, which explain, between the three, 90% of the growth registered in 2018.

The rest of the growth was basically due to the good results that occurred in the annual personal income tax return when settling the 2017 tax (and, therefore, linked to income generated in that year) and which translated into a strong increase of income and in maintaining the amount of refunds made.