Since 2009 Autonomous Communities have started to set their own Personal Income Tax rates for the first time. This is both the result of the 2009 rule change and the difficulties to get other public revenues during the years of the Great Recession.

We will examine what the Autonomous Communities explicit choices have been and see how they compare to what Canadian Provinces have done. Before 2000, these provinces other than Québec were required to use a surtax approach that saw provinces collect personal income tax as a % of federal taxes (tax on tax) using the same number of brackets, boundaries of brackets and progressivity structure. Since 2000 they can and have chosen to use a tax on income approach as noted above. Thus they must make similar choices to those of Autonomous Communities for their Personal Income Tax since 2000.