Church now liable for tax in Spain

The church is now liable to pay tax in Spain after the Government eliminated the exception they benefitted from on constructions, installations and works (ICIO). The result of the agreement that the Executive and the Episcopal Conference reached last March.

The elimination was announced by the Secretary of State for Finance, Jesús Gascón, during his speech at a macroeconomic information day organised by the Association of Economic Information Journalists (APIE). Until this Thursday morning, the program included the intervention of the Minister of Finance herself, María Jesús Montero.

But the deputy general secretary of the PSOE has cancelled her participation at the last minute, citing agenda problems and in the midst of negotiations and concessions to the Catalan independence movement to try to tie up her votes in the investiture of the current president, Pedro Sánchez. Montero is playing a fundamental role in this process.

Returning to the announcement made by Gascón, the number 2 of the Treasury has pointed out that the “Catholic Church is in the same situation as any other institution or organisation that has lucrative purposes.” The ICIO is a municipal tax, and the end of the exemption will have an impact of between 12 and 14 million.

According to a statement released in March by Executive and Church, the end of this tax exemption is “developed in the shared will between the Government of Spain and the Spanish Episcopal Conference to equate the tax regime of the Catholic Church with non-profit entities, in accordance with the principle of non-privilege and non-discrimination”.

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