The Plenary of the Constitutional Court has endorsed the tax of the Generalitat and the Barcelona City Council on stays in hotels and cruises.

Unanimously, the TC has dismissed the unconstitutionality appeal presented by the PP against article 5 of the "law on fiscal, financial, administrative and public sector measures and the creation of the tax on facilities that affect the environment", approved in April of last year by the Parliament.

The ruling, whose rapporteur has been the vice president of the TC

Encarnación Roca

, rules out that the tax, by affecting the stay in tourist cruise ships, has violated the prohibition of equivalence with state taxes, since there is already a state port rate that it is required for the special use of port facilities by a ship. According to the TC, these are different tax categories. The state tax is directed to the ship, while the Tourist Establishment Stays Tax (IEET) affects passengers.

The 2020 law modified the regulation of the tax, which is levied on stays, with or without an overnight stay, in hotels and similar, as is the case of tourist cruise ships.

On the one hand, the taxable event was expanded to include, along with the cruise ships that "moored" in Catalan ports (which were already taxed since 2012), those that "anchored" in those ports. In addition, the tax rates were increased.

The regulation also enabled the city of Barcelona to, through an ordinance, establish a surcharge on the tax rates.

There is no protectionism

The TC rejects that the reference to the tax on cruises implies an unjustified restriction on the free movement of people and services within the national territory and considers that it is not a protectionist tax measure.

"Although it cannot be ignored that, in a framework of free competition, tax measures affect the free exercise of economic activities, both supply and demand, the regional tax legislator does not establish in this IEET, and in relation to the tourist cruise ships, a protectionist difference in treatment between residents and non-residents in their territory, "says the ruling.

Neither do the magistrates see the violations of the principle of equality that the PP wielded in various ways.

For example, to receive equal to the one that disembarked that to the one that did not.

The Tc responds that the tax is modulated according to the circumstances of the stay, for example differentiating between stays longer than 12 hours or not.

Finally, the Generalitat is not considered to have invaded the exclusive state jurisdiction over General Finance by empowering the Barcelona City Council to establish - within the limits imposed by regional law - a surcharge on the tax rates.

The sentence reasons that it is the state legislator itself that provides for this possibility in the regulations on local finances, requiring only that this be explicitly provided for in a regional law.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

See links of interest

  • Holidays 2021

  • Holidays Catalonia

  • Home THE WORLD TODAY

  • Quarter-finals: Alexander Zverev - Alejandro Davidovich, live

  • Spain - Lithuania, live

  • Valencia Basket - Real Madrid

  • Rafa Nadal - Diego Schwartzman, live