Introduction

In 2020, tax revenues fell by 8.8% compared to the 2019 level, standing at 194,051 million .

The year was marked by the pandemic, which affected the development of the activity and the generation of income. The tax bases of the main taxes decreased by 7.7%. This decline is, however, less intense than that observed in other indicators such as nominal GDP or domestic demand, an indicator usually more closely related to fiscal variables. The main reason for this disparity lies in the compensating role played by public income (wages, pensions and other benefits, including transfers derived from ERTE) and which is reflected in the different intensity with which the bases linked to expenditure (-13.9%) and the bases related to income (-3.3%) decreased. Without the contribution of public revenues to tax collection, income would have fallen by around 2 points more.

In addition, revenues were affected by the impact of regulatory and management changes, and by high returns from previous years. Regarding the former, the changes with the greatest impact over the year as a whole were the result of pre-COVID measures. The numerous measures that were put in place to mitigate the effects of the health situation did not have such a large impact on the overall result, but they were significant over the course of the year. In net terms, all these measures improved revenues, but the impact was almost completely offset by the payment of the high refund requests that had been filed in 2019 and that were made in 2020.

Except for personal income tax, revenues decreased in all major figures. In the case of personal income tax, revenue increased by 1.2% for the reasons mentioned above. Corporate tax revenues fell by 33.2%, although a large part of the decline was related to the management of refunds. In VAT the drop was 11.5%. And in Special Taxes, revenues were 12.1% lower than those recorded in 2019.