The Supreme Court has handed down a sentence in which it obliges MEPs to pay more taxes for the salary they receive from the European Parliament. The contentious judges have established that the emoluments they charge, almost 9,000 euros gross per month, are subject to Personal Income Tax (IRPF) and that their situation cannot be equated to the situation of a worker abroad, exempt from paying that tax. A few weeks ago, as this newspaper reported, the Supreme Court also increased the bill that former MEPs must pay for their supplementary pensions.
The magistrates have studied the case of Gabriel Mato Adrover, MEP of the Popular Party and, since last year, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the party headed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo in its national leadership. According to the Justice, he received his salary as an MEP but between 2010 and 2013 he stopped entering more than 60,000 euros when he understood that this money was not subject to personal income tax. Neither the Tax Agency nor the Canarian courts agreed with him and he decided to go to the Supreme Court to defend that he should not pay those taxes.
Among his arguments was that his annual salary was already diminished by a community tax, similar to the Spanish personal income tax, and that this incurred double taxation. In 2011, for example, he collected more than 95,000 euros from Parliament and paid almost 21,000 for this European tax. In addition, the Canarian politician understands, he had to take advantage of the exemption established by law for workers of companies located abroad or because it is considered a job performance.
The Superior Court of the Canary Islands was the first to reject the arguments of the PP MEP: “It is absolutely absurd to try to equate the European Parliament with a non-resident entity, since the European parliamentarians hold the representation of the citizens of the Union European”, said that sentence. Some arguments that the third room of the Supreme Court has just confirmed.
Those possibilities of exemption from paying personal income tax that Mato Adrover cited do not apply to a member of the European Parliament. This requires that between the taxpayer and the employer there is an employment relationship for someone else or civil servant. Something that does not exist in the case of a MEP: “There is no labor relationship, in any of its possible aspects, nor statutory, nor is there any dependency of its members on the Chamber,” say the judges.
The Supreme also reproaches Gabriel Mato, member of the board of the PP of Alberto Núñez-Feijóo for less than a year, who intends to equate the European Parliament where he has worked since 2009 to a non-resident company in Spain. The companies, says the Supreme Court, have economic or social purposes that have nothing to do with the European Parliament. “Neither does it constitute a fixed place of business, nor does it fit into some of the examples to use such as branches, agencies, offices or workshops,” says the Supreme Court. “It is about favoring companies and their degree of internationalization and individually considered workers who must travel abroad for work reasons, which is not in keeping with the institutional character and parliamentary purposes in a common political and economic organization of several countries and the role that the European Parliament fulfills”.
This ruling comes shortly after the same Supreme Court established that the old complementary pensions that MEPs were able to enjoy until 2009 should be taxed partly as work income but also partly as real estate income, increasing the bill of several former parliamentarians who they had taken their case to court.
