Autonomous communities and local councils have ensured this year the update of the advances in their financing system, even as the Government decided not to approve new national budgets for 2024.
Even before the decision to renounce new budgets, this Wednesday the Government had already chosen to use the processing of the crisis measures bill against conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to secure the update of the advances to territorial administrations. Before March 6, when the deadline for submitting amendments to this bill expired, the Socialist group filed a set of amendments in the Congress, accessible to El Periódico de Cataluña, from the Prensa Ibérica group, proposing among other things to guarantee the update of autonomies and local corporations incomes.
“The aim is to update the amounts of the advances according to the state tax revenue forecast used to draft the General State Budgets for 2024,” reads the justification for those amendments.
As announced by the minister José Luis Escrivá, another amendment is intended to ensure a 2% salary rise for public employees in the absence of new Budgets for this year. The introduction of zero VAT for oil until June 30 and a continuation until 2028 of the prohibition on foreclosures on mortgage loans to vulnerable families are other measures the Socialist group included in its amendments.
Territorial Financing
The calculation of the advances is based on an expected total revenue of 235,760 million, drawn from the forecasted collections for personal income tax (IRPF) at 123,041 million, value-added tax (VAT) at 90,849 million, and special taxes on alcohol, beer, intermediate products, hydrocarbons, tobacco, and electricity. The revenue forecast represents a 6.45% increase over the 2023 figure of 221,474 million.
In this way, the Government fulfills what it already communicated to each autonomous community and to local corporations in mid-December, within the framework of the Fiscal Policy and Financing Council and the National Local Administration Commission. Specifically, the Treasury reported advances to autonomous communities totaling 134,658.34 million, an 8.34% rise from 2023. For local corporations, advances will reach 23,773 million euros, up 5.1% from 2023.
In their amendments, the amounts to account from the Global Sufficiency Fund are also set, totaling 262 million, allocated to Catalunya, Galicia, Andalusia, Asturias, Cantabria, La Rioja, Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha, the Canary Islands, Extremadura, Castilla y León, Melilla, and Ceuta with varying allocations for each region.