The country's major town councils are once again looking toward the IBI tax, a tax on urban and rural real estate properties. Every year they try to get as much as possible from this tax. This year the municipal tax will go up by 10% on average, which is the same increase as last year.
In addition to this tax hike, Spain faces higher taxes on personal income, VAT, power bills, water, gasoline and public transportation. These increases will further decrease the purchasing power of the country's citizens. It is high time that local administrations abandon the easy way to get tax revenues and start looking toward their own structural inefficiencies in order to reduce cost and improve systems. Among other reasons, they should do this because five years have passed since the crisis began, and hardly any changes have been made to these burdensome local governments.
