Taxpayers with higher incomes continued to rise in the declared income tax, known as IRPF. In 2021, individuals reporting more than 601,000 euros in annual income totaled 12,178, surpassing the previous year by 9.6% according to figures from the Ministry of Finance. This elite group, though representing just 0.06% of all taxpayers, contributed 6.74% of total revenue and kept growing. A decade earlier, only 5,612 taxpayers fell into this top tier, accounting for 0.03% of the total, yet they already accounted for 3.88% of revenue at that time, illustrating their increasing share of income over time.
The same data show that about 8.3 million returns reported income from work. Most of these returns fell under the mid-range, with fewer than 12,000 euros attributed to the 2021 fiscal year. This figure marked a 5.8% decline from 2020, a dip that contrasts with gains seen in high-income segments despite asset value reductions tied to the wartime crisis in Ukraine. The distribution underscores how earnings are concentrated among a relatively small portion of taxpayers while broad segments still contribute significantly to total revenue.
Within the income brackets, the groups with the largest counts and shares were those declaring between 12,000 and 21,000 euros annually, totaling 4.5 million people and representing 20.5% of the total. The band from 4,400,000 to 30,000 to 60,000 euros also accounted for about 20.04% of the total. A further 3.7 million filers, or 16.96%, reported earnings between 21,000 and 30,000 euros, while around 3.3 million, or 14.84%, reported income from work ranging from 1,500 to 6,000 euros per year. About 2.2 million taxpayers, equating to 10.02%, declared income between 6,000 and 12,000 euros.
Minimum Living Income and Other Considerations
In the lowest segment, 1.4 million taxpayers, or 6.46% of the total, paid taxes in the range of 0 to 1,500 euros for the full year. On the other end, another 1.4 million declarations, or 6.45% of the total, reported negative or zero results, a category that includes potential recipients of the minimum living income (IMV).
The IMV has been a subject of debate between the Ministry of Social Security and the Independent Financial Responsibility Agency (Airef). Early calculations suggested that beneficiary households numbered over 600,000, while Airef estimated 284,000 beneficiaries out of the 800,000 figure cited by the ministry. This disagreement highlights the challenges in measuring the program’s reach and impact across households with varying financial needs.
At the higher end of the IRPF spectrum, those reporting between 60,000 and 150,000 euros made up 4.11% of the total, while those in the 150,000 to 600,000 euro bracket accounted for 0.56% of declarations. Treasury statistics show that in 2021, 22,048,548 settlements were filed, a 1.9% increase as the economy began to recover from the pandemic’s effects. The total number of declarations included income from over 20 million jobs, with roughly the same figure as in 2020. A small change in this context was a rise of 1,952,915 with 3, 1 more, reflecting fluctuations in employment and earnings.
Business income, as is customary, remained higher on average than income from other economic activities, with an average of about 22,377 euros annually, compared with roughly 12,924 euros for other categories. These figures illuminate how income concentration and the structure of earnings influence overall tax collections and the distribution of tax burdens across the economy. Data from the treasury for the 2021 fiscal year portray a landscape where economic recovery is gradually taking hold, even as certain segments face ongoing pressures from global events.