Olive oil will no longer have VAT from July

The government of Spain has announced that it will stop applying value added tax (VAT). olive oil from July 1. The Ministry of Finance will submit the measure to the Council of Ministers next Tuesday.

The VAT on olive oil is only 5%, since the 2023 reduction. Now it is added to others qualified essential productssuch as bread, flour, milk, cheese, eggs, fruits and vegetables, which are a 0% VAT.

Olive oil is the product in the shopping cart that has increased the most. In less than four years, since January 2021, it has multiplied its price by three (an increase of 198.5%). In May it was 62.8% more expensive than a year ago.

As the ministry reports, the aim of this measure is “to protect and stimulate the consumption of olive oil, a healthy product whose price has recently increased due to, among other things, the drought.”

This measure was demanded by Junts in support of the investiture of Pedro Sanchez. PSOE and Sumar registered this measure as an amendment to the bill, derived from the anti-crisis decree.

In addition, on June 12, Sánchez announced the extension of the VAT reduction on basic foodstuffs, so that this new measure relating to olive oil could be included in the same legislative decree, pending approval by Congress before June 30, the date on which it expires .

“The evolution of food prices still remains high and that is why we have to make this effort, which is a huge effort for the public treasury,” the president of the government said at the time.

The decision to extend this reduction is in stark contrast to what was communicated to the European Union on 30 April in the document updating the macroeconomic and budgetary forecasts for 2024 and 2025, in which the government envisaged that on 30 June it would VAT reduction would be reversed. eat.