The Constitutional Court will resolve by ruling the dispute between the Government and the Senate over the inheritance tax | Economy

The Constitutional Court will resolve the conflict between the Government and the Senate over the inheritance and gift tax. This Tuesday, the court of guarantees admitted to processing the Executive’s challenge against the agreement by which the Senate Bureau processed a bill on November 21 of last year that repeals the legislation relating to the tax. The Treasury considers that this decision could imply a violation of articles 134.6 of the Constitution and 151 of the Senate regulations, in relation to the exercise of the power of budget veto. The admission for processing of the appeal does not have suspensive effects on the processing of the bill, presented by the PP. This is the first conflict between State institutions that the Constitutional Court will have to resolve in this legislature, pending the PP’s presentation of another against the Executive regarding the amnesty law, an issue that the party’s leadership is studying.

Article 134.6 of the Constitution on which the Government relies for its challenge provides that “any proposal or amendment that involves an increase in credits or a decrease in budgetary income will require the consent of the Government for its processing.” That agreement was never obtained by the Senate Board. On the contrary, after the Council of Ministers on December 19, the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, appeared at the usual press conference in Moncloa warning that the Senate had been required to paralyze the processing of the law. which proposed the elimination of the inheritance tax at the national level. Bolaños considered that this initiative implied a “flagrant” violation of the Constitution and announced the appeal, finally presented, if the Upper House did not back down.

The Government’s essential argument has always been that its consent is necessary for the Cortes Generales to process any regulation that implies “a decrease in budgetary income”, as established in the aforementioned article of the Constitution. Bolaños added that the measure would have an “obvious impact” on the State’s coffers, which he estimated at around 2.8 billion euros. He added that this figure was higher than the €2.52 billion that the Government allocated to scholarships the previous year. He also stated that he had sent a legal report to the Senate with these allegations, which had no effect. A month later, on January 18, the Upper House decided to maintain the processing of the aforementioned bill.

Previously, the Ministry of Finance prepared a report in which it realized that the elimination of the tax would imply serious losses in revenue, in relation to a tax transferred to the autonomous communities, although not all of them apply it. This would imply that the State would have to compensate said communities using as reference data the sum obtained in the last collection recorded before the elimination of the tax had been completed. The Senate, in any case, considered that it should “ignore and not admit to processing” the disagreement raised by the Government, which led to the formalization of the appeal that will now be resolved by the Constitutional Court, after requesting arguments from the parties.