“Spain cannot charge taxes if it is forbidden to make money”

Thousands of bars and restaurants in Spain have to close their doors or their survival is no longer certain after the tightened measures of the government that will continue to collect tax money from this affected group of entrepreneurs. The monthly self-employed premium to be paid, the quarterly sales tax and the wage tax, everything continues as normal while business has almost been halted for weeks. Without a preconceived plan, a viral campaign arose in café Septiembre in Cambre (A Coruña) to stop paying taxes to the government as long as the crisis continues.

No income, no taxes
The bar’s owner and sole employee, Santiago Dávila, posted a photo to Facebook a few days ago that was shared more than 2,400 times in no time, mostly by hospitality entrepreneurs in a similar situation. The photo shows the entire restaurant staff under a light sign that reads: “You can’t ask for tax money if you’re forbidden to make money.” Dávila did not foresee in advance that this would end in a real action. He only shared a photo that he had already encountered on the internet and that went viral again due to him. The fact that it is not his own restaurant and staff in the photo does not detract from his message, namely that he is displeased with the measures taken by the regional management that are hitting his sector so hard. For example, bars and restaurants in Galicia literally had to close their doors overnight for a month without offering any financial compensation. Dávila believes that, unlike the first in the spring, the authorities should have anticipated and anticipated the second wave.

Dávila has calculated that his income this year is between 30 and 40 percent lower than normal. He attributes the second wave of corona to the family gatherings in Spain and not to the catering industry, the sector that, according to him, has done everything to follow the anti-covid regulations as closely as possible. “Now, after the bars and restaurants close at 11 pm, people continue to party at someone’s house. And there is no question of social distance at all, so in a way the catering industry was still a brake on the spread of the corona virus. Now we will see what will happen ”, said the bar owner from Cambre.

Editors: Godelieve Notermans / InSpanje.nl