terms, arising from various considerations. first, the higher revenues under the new vat sii system are not passed through to national accounts items. under european law – specifically, article 2 of regulation ( ec ) no 2516 / 2000 – the impact on the general government deficit of taxes and social contributions must follow the accrual principle. this means that taxes should affect the deficit of the period in which the taxable events giving rise to the tax payments take place. applying this regulation, the vat accrued in 2017 and collected in 2018 was recorded in 2017 and, in a similar manner, the increases in revenue included in the draft budget due to the effect of the sii would not affect the general government deficit in national accounts terms. second, although there is always some uncertainty regarding the response of government revenues to tax bases ( elasticity of taxation ), the draft budget projections seem to be based on higher elasticities than have been recorded on average in the past. this consideration is based on the banco de espana ’ s estimation of a set of standard models for the main items of government revenue ( personal income tax, vat, corporate income tax, social contributions and excise duties ). these items are made to depend on the growth in the macroeconomic bases of the draft budget for 2019, with an impact proportional to the tax elasticities estimated by the european commission and the organisation for economic co - operation and development ( oecd ), to which should be added the effect of the measures i have already described, taking the impact on the draft budget estimated ex ante. according to these calculations, the aggregate collection of shared taxes and social contributions would increase by 5. 6 % in 2019, as compared with the increase projected in the draft budget of 6. 9 %, correcting for the effect of the sii in both cases ( see left - hand panel of chart 9 ). the main source of this discrepancy is the difference in the projected social contributions ( see right - hand panel of chart 9 ). banco de espana testimony by the governor of the banco de espana before parliament in relation to the draft state and social security budget for 2019 the third source of risk for projected revenues that i wish to highlight relates to the fact that the estimation of the revenue impact of the new taxes is subject to a high degree of uncertainty, given the absence of any data on how they have functioned in the past. finally, caution should be exercised in relation to the potential delay in

results. finally, another interesting finding is that the issue was not only one of quantity but also about prices. banks ’ proximity to buffers appears to have affected the cost of lending. the reasons behind this problem are unclear. it may have occurred because the level of uncertainty was very high for banks, and they were foreseeing that there might be losses in the future, and thus wanted to keep these buffers so they could be used to cover those losses. that is one possibility. the lack of formal guidance by supervisors on the rebuilding of these buffers might be another issue. low profitability may also be a reason for this result or market stigma. we are now in the process of trying to understand precisely the origin of this problem. closely related to this and a very important issue is the question of releasable buffers. in the basel framework there are some buffers, in particular the countercyclical buffer, that are intended to be activated in boom periods, precisely in order to make banks more resilient, and to be deactivated during recessions. here the analysis of the basel committee suggests that the release of such buffers had a positive effect on lending during the pandemic. the results, for example, specifically for the euro area, for which we had more microdata, suggest that banks are adjusting internal capital targets cyclically : in boom periods banks reduce their own internal capital targets, and they do the opposite when there is a recession. the evidence also points to the fact that macroprudential authorities have the ability to influence these internal capital targets by releasing or activating the ccyb ( countercyclical capital buffer ). this is precisely why the evidence points to the fact that the release of the capital buffer also generated a reduction in banks ’ internal capital targets and this ultimately allowed them to provide more credit to the economy. if i combine all this information, the one thing that is clear to me now, which i think we need to think more about it in the next stage, is that we need to consider whether there is sufficient releasable capital in the system. let me give two very concrete examples of why i think this is necessary. the best example is the covid - 19 crisis. in many jurisdictions,, we were observing the emergence of systemic risk in the economy before the crisis, and that is why many public macroprudential authorities decided to activate the ccyb. then a completely exogenous