Britons living in Spain often complain about Spanish tax. I can't actually find anything on the internet that directly compares the average tax burden between countries. I suppose, in the end, there are so many variables, from obvious taxes like income tax and VAT/IVA through to the sugar tax on soft drinks, that it's almost impossible to calculate. What there are are official figures, at country level, about how much tax revenues represent, as a percentage of the total budget. For instance in the UK taxes represent 35.5% of the total GDP. In Spain that figure is 38.4%. So, in Spain, a greater percentage of the money that runs the country comes from taxation - that's all forms of taxation from tobacco duty and corporation tax through to inheritance tax. The specific gripe of Britons is that they feel the Spanish Government takes more of their personal wealth than the British one did and I don't know whether they are right or not.
Whatever other Britons might say I still take a sort of guilty pleasure when I get notification of my road tax and it's less than 20€ for the year. Our IBI which is a bit like Council Tax, for the year, in Culebrón, is 97.41€. In Huntingdonshire, the last place we lived in England, I understand the average (mean) council tax is now £1,860 per year. That's a bit of a saving, in fact it's more of a saving than my Spanish income tax bill for the year.
Our Culebrón water bill for the first six months of the current water year is 41.70€. From the detail on the bill it seems that the actual cost of the water is 0.0518636363636364 cents - five hundredths of a cent - per litre. With all the additional costs for renting the water meter and paying towards the upkeep of the system the real cost per litre comes out at a staggering 0.0956363636363636 cents or, rounded up, a tenth of a cent per litre.
That water price reminded me of the furore there was in 2005 or 2006 when the boss of Nestlé argued that water wasn't a right, it was, he said, just another foodstuff best valued and distributed by the free market. The quote was taken out of context and used to beat Nestlé with a stick but, given their reputation for dodgy marketing and exploiting the poor, that's hardly surprising. Anyway if you decided that you wanted to buy bottled, Nestlé brand water from our local supermarket the cheapest you can get works out at 34 cents per litre - 350 times more expensive than our tap water. The cheapest, own brand, bottled water from a local supermarket is only 112 times more expensive than the tap borne equivalent.
Just to make any British readers groan my car tax is 17.39€. The same car would cost £180 in the UK. The other bills we get locally are 60€ a year for rubbish collection and 41€ for drainage. That last one I don't particularly like given that the drains installed in the village fell short of our house by about 300 metres. We're paying for something we don't have, something tangible and real, not a shared community asset like education or road signs and that seems a bit unfair. On the other hand it's only 41€ so I can just about bear it.
______________________________________________-
Here's the, translated, email I got from the Spanish Government/SUMA
THIS EMAIL IS IN RELATION TO A NOTICE OF AN ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION.
Please be informed that a new communication is available for CHRISTOPHER JOHN THOMPSON with NIF/NIE ***935*** as the named person with the following details:
Cardholder CHRISTOPHER JOHN THOMPSON with NIF/NIE: ***935***
Issuing body: O.A. Suma Gestion Tributaria Diputacion de Alicante, with DIR3: LA0004956
Identifier: 743506564db1b955160d
Quality: CSV-2023.2727.6758.4931
Link: This was a webpage address
You can access this communication at the Single Enabled Electronic Address (DEHÚ) of the General Access Point, available at: https://dehu.redsara.es
We provide a direct link to the communication.
Government of Spain
