The National Audit has refused to precautionarily suspend the collection of the tax hit on banks and electricity approved last November with which the Government intends to raise 6.5 billion.
The Contentious-Administrative Chamber has rejected Repsol’s request to leave the collection on the air while its appeal against the Treasury order that approved the collection models is resolved. Despite the fact that the oil company only claimed the suspension as far as it was affected, the court’s criteria means that it will not accept other requests for suspension that come to it. The employers of banks and electricity companies have already presented or announced their appeals against the temporary tax.
The magistrates consider that rejecting the suspension does not imply irreparable damage, since if the appeal is finally upheld, it would be a perfectly reversible situation by returning the amount paid, with the payment of the mandatory interest.
They add that, on the contrary, the suspension of the order of the Treasury and with it that of the law that approved the tax would cause serious damage to the general interest “by making it impossible to collect the tax, leaving one of the requirements of the tax unfulfilled.” Law that in its Exposition of Motives speaks of having a primary purpose of ‘collection’, in order to demand, in these times of energy crisis and inflation, a greater effort from those who have greater economic capacity, that is, a sample of solidarity of the great fortunes'”.
The court thus aligns itself with the arguments of the Government, which through the State Attorney’s Office highlighted that the income was already provided for in the budgets. “In the current financial year, the public deficit forecast is 3.3%, so the decrease in income would force an increase in the financing needs of the Kingdom of Spain and, therefore, its financial costs,” he stated in his opposition letter. at Repsol’s request.
The court considers that the precautionary measure would mean “the petrification of the legal system”, since based on requests for suspensions of the precautionary measure “the application of a Law would be paralyzed that has a detailed justification in its explanatory statement and with respect to which This Chamber has nothing to say because it totally lacks competence to annul norms with the force of law”.
Formally, the appeal does not ask to suspend the law, but rather the Treasury procedures to execute it, but the court considers that in practice it would mean paralyzing the norm, something that is prohibited. “The reason for the implementation of the levy that the appellant wants, de facto, to paralyze refers to the increase in inflation, the influence of the Ukrainian War, the supply problems derived from the pandemic, the insufficient increase in wages and other reasons that are detailed in the explanatory statement of the Law and to which this Chamber should not respond”, says the court presided over by magistrate José Guerrero Zaplana.
The decision comes days after the same court denied the suspension by very precautionary means, that is, immediately and without requesting the opinion of the parties, in this case the Government. After requesting the opinion of the State Attorney, the magistrates ratify their refusal, which means that the tax will be collected while the appeal is being studied.
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