Resumen de Wealth Taxation and Decentralization: the Spanish Case

José María Durán Cabré, Alejandro Esteller Moré

• The future of personal wealth taxation, that is, the inheritance and gift tax (IT) and the annual wealth tax (AWT), and their possible elimination is one of the topics currently discussed in the field of tax reform. In Spain, one of the few countries that currently levies both taxes, the debate is moreover affected by a decentralization process. In this paper, on the one hand, we analyse what is currently happening among Spanish regions, which once received legal power to modify taxes, started a competition race that may take to the abolition of IT. On the other hand, an analysis of AWT permits to observe a very poor development of tax bases, with declared values of important assets (estates, equity shares or money and banking deposits) among rich taxpayers that clearly vary along time well far away from their respective market price evolution.