The large electric companies resort to the tax on energy companies

Madrid (EFE).- The Association of Electric Power Companies (Aelec) has announced this Thursday its decision to file a contentious-administrative appeal before the National Court against the extraordinary and temporary tax on large energy companies, promoted by the Government.

In a statement, the association that brings together the main electricity companies in Spain, Iberdrola, Endesa and EDP, called this tax “discriminatory and unjustified”, which is applied to unregulated income in national territory, with a rate of 1.2 %.

For Aelec, the benefit “penalizes a key sector to promote the necessary change in the energy model”, and is inconsistent from a fiscal point of view because “it taxes income that was already capped and regulated by the Public Administration at 67 euros/megawatt hour (MWh)”.

In addition, it continues, it affects “even” concepts that the Executive bills through the electricity sector, which do not provide any benefit to these companies.

Aelec regrets that the formula applied by Spain is based on income and not on profits, as in Europe, and maintains that it generates discrimination “because only a certain number of electricity companies are eligible and others, regardless of their size, are exempt.”

The energy tax, with which the Government expected to enter 2,000 million euros per year – a figure that would be reduced by the exemptions introduced in the parliamentary process – taxes unregulated income in Spain, with a rate of 1.2%.

It is a temporary tax for two years -the results of 2022 and 2023 are taxed, to be paid in 2023 and 2024, respectively-, although the regulations themselves provide for the possibility of making them permanent.

The decision of the electric companies is known a day after the Spanish banking employers announced their appeal against their respective extraordinary tax, with which the Executive expects to raise some 3,000 million euros in two years to finance social measures against the rise in rates and inflation.