A civil society alliance proposes a forest tax system that encourages the active management of private forests, trying to reverse the trend towards their abandonment.
Active forest management is presented as the main tool to mitigate two of the main problems that the forest is facing, such as the progressive abandonment, a result of smallholdings and rural depopulation, and climate change. Both problems aggravate the scenario of large forest fires, such as those suffered by Galicia in the autumn of 2017. For this reason, a civil society alliance has developed in recent months a proposal at the state level for the reform of forest taxation, in a way that encourages active forest management.
The proposal was embodied in a document jointly prepared by Greenpeace, WWF and the Juntos por los Bosques platform, which brings together more than a hundred forestry entities from all over Spain, including the Galicia Forestry Association. This month, the presentation of the document to all political groups in the Congress of Deputies will begin, with the aim of achieving a broad consensus that will serve to modify forest taxation.
In early February, the proposal will be delivered to the president of the Commission for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Cristina Narbona, with whom a representative of the Juntos por los Bosques platform has closed a meeting. It is also worth remembering that last September, the Galician Parliament approved supporting the sector's demand for a more flexible forestry tax regime.
The proposal signed by Greenpeace, WWF and Juntos por los Bosques is based on the manifest general interest derived from the multiple positive environmental externalities generated by forestry activity, such as the capture of CO2, the regulation of the water cycle, the control of erosion, the supply of renewable raw materials or the maintenance of biodiversity.
"To all this we must add the fact that the forestry person, through the development of a sustainable forestry activity, becomes a manager of the territory, avoiding the abandonment of the forest and preventing large forest fires," indicates Francisco Dans, vice president of the Forestry Association of Galicia.
With the proposed tax incentives, the aim is to boost active forestry, characterized by the execution of forestry operations on a periodic basis, which contributes to reducing the volume of biomass in the forest, while also tidying up the territory.
These measures would also contribute to achieving the viability of the activity from an economic point of view, thus trying to facilitate the management of smaller plots, which for the most part belong to private owners.
Deduction of expenses and investments in tax rreturn
To achieve this economic viability and promote investments in the forest, a series of measures are proposed, among which the deduction of 20% of the expenses and investments made by active foresters for the conservation, improvement and protection of the forest stands out, being able to access this deduction as long as sustainable forest management is developed, in managed and certified forests.
This deduction would increase to 40% in the case of those forests that have a marked protective character and a lower timber orientation. “The objective is to channel private investments towards actions that have marked general objectives, such as the protection of places with high environmental interest, the maintenance of biodiversity in sensitive areas, the creation of natural barriers against forest fires or the management of areas for the protection of archaeological and ethnographic assets,” highlights Daniel Rodríguez, economic director of the Forestry Association of Galicia and one of the authors of the proposal.
This increase in deductions for forestry activity in the Personal Income Tax would complement many other measures already included in the taxes transferred to the Autonomous Community of Galicia, so that they serve as a definitive boost to an activity that can and must have a relevant role in the future in consolidating the population in rural areas.
