For many, the perfect tax system is one in which those who have more pay more and those who have less pay more, even though regulations are established with a very negative effect on economic and social well-being.
In ancient Greece it was already said, what shines surprises the eye, and those regulations that are exposed to the citizen with a supposed spirit aimed at taxing the so-called large companies do so.
The main problem with most of the current regulations with the intention of increasing revenue is found in the disastrous effect they have on investment in positive activities and actions for economic and social development. In the case of our country, this type of rule has come to limit the application, for example, of deductions as important for the development of a nation as R&D, whose effects directly or indirectly go beyond the business environment, even limiting a deduction whose objective is to promote access to the labor market for people with disabilities.
How many times has the reader heard in a media outlet say to one of their elected representatives something like: “we must increase investment in R&D for the development of our country”, “we need to change the production model”, as if this was done by magic in a legislature. As Hippocrates once said, the art of learning is long but life is short, opportunity fleeting, experience misleading and judgment difficult, and it is that these kinds of rules at best correspond to such misleading experience. as none of those who impose them, with an excessive audacity for having the fleeting opportunity to hear their voice in a parliament without even having begun the long path of the art of learning and at worst we speak of norms that correspond to a judgment so difficult, that it puts a minimum collection before the incentives for development.
That’s right, we believe that the path is totally opposite to the one undertaken, from experience we know that the development of nations is directly related to investment in innovative activities by the taxpayer and one of the best tools that exist as an incentive is taxation .
In addition, the application of tax incentives related to activities such as R&D must be the same for all taxpayers, regardless of whether they are taxed individually or consolidated and regardless of the size of the company that makes the investment, these types of characteristics do not are adequate to regulate incentives for investment in activities with a significant social impact, since in the first place they harm the ultimate beneficiary of these incentives, which is the citizen and the nation itself, and secondly, the normative regulation on them in the sense restrictive causes a perception of rejection for the investor.
The way to continue advancing in the progressivity of the tax system is to take measures aimed, if not at increasing, at least at eliminating the limitations in the application of deductions for investment in activities that suppose an economic and social benefit. Rather, efforts should be focused on a global taxation agreement on the taxation of undistributed profits, but not for the purpose of collection, but rather by offering incentives for the capitalization of company profits and their reinvestment in new value-generating activities, establishing rules so that there is a direct relationship between the place of effective taxation and the place of application of the incentives.
Ultimately , as we know , the progressivity of the tax system and its influence on the development of nations depends on the tax rates and the amount to be paid , but also on other variables such as deductions or discounts , and above all on the application of these incentives in those activities and actions with the greatest impact and social benefit, so that in order to walk the long road of learning and achieving the goal of optimizing the tax system, we must bear in mind that our lives are short, but hopefully our society be eternal, that’s why when some legislate the tax rules and others see them published in the BOE, let the eyes of both see behind the glitter.
