The initiative of the Canarian Parliament to save triangular trade will reach Congress in October

The Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, talks with the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande Marlaska, in the plenary session of Congress. / EFE

This Monday is the deadline to declare the Corporate Tax without a correction from the Government to replace the reduced rate of 4%

The initiative of the Parliament of the Canary Islands that proposes the modification of the Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF) to save triangular trade will not reach the registry of Congress until October and will await its turn for its full consideration debate.

Meanwhile, the companies that carry out this type of economic activity under the umbrella of the
Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC) have today July 25 the last day to declare the Corporation Tax corresponding to the 2021 financial year without the reduced rate of 4% that the General Directorate of State Taxes questions having been restored.

The possibility had been considered that the "informal provision" of the Ministry of Finance to eliminate this restrictive interpretation would be expressed through a decree before the deadline expired, but this option was ruled out because it would have meant a comparative offense for those companies that They had already declared the Corporation Tax, given that the Treasury categorically rules out that the eventual restitution of the reduced rate can be applied retroactively.

The fix will come
in any case already for the next exercise through the proposition of law that the Parliament of the Canary Islands is going to send to the Cortes, provided that it obtains the approval of the Congress for its entry into processing.

The initiative that the autonomous Chamber supported on July 13 in an extraordinary plenary session -with the sole exception of the Podemos parliamentary group- must now comply with the mandatory procedures that, with the non-working period of August every other, will not culminate until the end of September , which will allow it to be sent to the Lower House at the beginning of October.

"The initiative has a process that takes time," says Esther González, vice president of the Canarian Parliament, "now it is waiting for the report from the Government,
then it will be sent to the Advisory Council so that it also issues its report and then the period for amendments opens, which will be joint - total and partial in the same period - to speed up the process. There are more optimistic estimates but I calculate that we will be able to send it to Congress at the beginning of October », he adds.

Once registered in the Lower House, the Table orders its publication in the
Official Gazette of the Cortes Generales and sends the bill to the Government, which has to give its approval to take it into consideration. In the event that the State Executive understands that it supposes an increase in expenses or a decrease in income, it has the ability to veto it. If after 30 days the Government has not made a statement, it will be understood that it has no objection and the text will be in a position to be included in the agenda of the plenary session.

At this point, the bill will have to wait for a date to be given for the debate to take it into consideration, in which three representatives of the Canarian Parliament will be able to defend it. As a general rule, the Congress Table carries out one autonomous initiative per month, in strict order of arrival.

An initiative from the Madrid Assembly is currently awaiting and at the end of September they also reach the Chamber
the General State Budgets (PGE) that dominate much of the parliamentary activity, so it is difficult to estimate when the Canarian proposal can be debated.

"The idea is to solve the situation of triangular trade as soon as possible," says González, "but the political will of the state government also counts, which remains to be verified," he adds.

An activity authorized for 20 years that is now questioned by the General Directorate of Taxes

Triangular trade, in which a company buys a product at one point and sells it at another without going through the territory of the autonomous community, is an authorized activity since the
Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC)in the year 2000, and that it had been accepting the taxation of Corporation Tax at a reduced rate of 4% without the Treasury making an inconvenience.

It was in 2020 when the Tax Agency questioned the right of companies to benefit from the reduced rate and requested an internal report from the General Directorate of State Taxes, which concluded that triangular trade operations do not have the right to enjoy taxation. Of the 4% since no part of the process takes place in or from the ZEC.

A year later, it was the Canary Islands Special Zone Consortium itself that requested an official report from the Directorate General of Taxes. East
second report, binding, issued in June 2021establishes that "the non-application of the special reduced rate of this fiscal instrument to the tax base derived from the transfer of goods, which at the time of the transfer are not in the Canary Islands, even if their transfer was organized with material and human resources located in Canary Islands".

The ZEC notified the change to the
120 companies engaged in triangular trade to warn them that they would no longer be able to continue paying taxes at the reduced rate and that no other company would be authorized to carry out this type of activity.

The bill that the Canarian Parliament is going to send to Congress, promoted at the initiative of the parliamentary group of the Canarian Coalition (CC), aims to modify the REF to establish unequivocally and not subject to interpretations that triangular trade can be accepted permanently at the reduced rate of 4%.