3.2.1. Impact of regulatory changes

One of the differentiating features of 2014 with respect to previous years was the scarce importance in revenue due to regulatory changes. In the whole of the year these changes had a total impact valued at 125 million euros.

In figures, the greatest impact corresponded to Corporation Tax (-1,277 million). The negative character of this impact was a consequence, on the one hand, of measures which were only in force temporarily, such as the special levies (it must be recalled that impacts are measured in differential terms with respect to the previous year), and on the other had that the impact of the new measures on net tax liability (new treatment of losses in investee companies, limitation of depreciation costs and others) was not translated into higher incomes in 2014 but instead into reducing the accumulated balances of negative tax bases (that is, into increasing future incomes instead of present).

As for measures, it is necessary to distinguish those which came into force for the first time in 2014 from those which were inherited from previous years. In the former (new measures in Personal Income Tax, the cash accounting scheme in VAT, the partial exemption from the Electricity Tax and the new Tax on Greenhouse-Effect Fluoridated Gases), the net impact was 82 million euros.

In those of previous years with effect in 2014, it is necessary to distinguish two groups. On the one hand, there would be the impacts from measures that came into force at the beginning of 2013, whose first entry occurred from February of that year and, consequently, their effect lasted until the first months of 2014 (taxation environmental, the modifications in the Special Taxes on Hydrocarbons and on Coal, the special tax on the prizes of certain lotteries and bets, the variations in rates in the Special Taxes on tobacco products and on alcohol and, although with other characteristics, the recovery of extra pay for public employees and the end of the reduced rate on housing). All these measures increased revenue by 1,929 million euros and did so, moreover, in the first part of the year. On the other hand there are the effects in the net tax liability of Personal Income Tax and Corporation Tax, which respond to the adjustments between withholdings and payments on account affected by the measures in 2013 and their settlement in the annual tax return filed in 2014. In this case, the impacts are negative and occurred in the second half of the year, practically cancelling out the upward trend produced by the previous measures.

The principal figures are shown in the following table of the Annex: