Mogán Town Hall confirmed on Wednesday that its legal services have in their possession a notification of a favourable resolution that rejects the administrative appeal filed by the Federation of Hotel and Tourism Entrepreneurs (FEHT) of Las Palmas. The dispute revolved around the modification of the Fiscal Ordinance Regulating the rate for the provision of the home garbage collection service and treatment of urban solid waste.
The aforementioned amendment was approved by the Plenary at the end of 2019, although the new rates were not applied until November 2023. This measure was adopted to alleviate the tax pressure on citizens, which had been considerable due to the health, social and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The FEHT argued that the amendment should be declared void for violating the principle of equivalence, arguing that the technical-economic report on which it was based dated back to 2017. However, the ruling states that in 2023, at the end of the COVID-19 crisis, a new technical-economic report was issued. This report used a methodology supported by real information on the market value and possible cost coverage, in relation to the 2017 report. Thus, the rates approved in 2019 based on the 2017 report were reinstated in 2024 without increases.
The ruling argues that the disputed modification was supported by an appropriate technical-economic report, which considered the real or foreseeable cost of the service as a whole, the value of the service received and the criteria for quantifying the fee for the preparation of the rate settlements, complying with the requirements of the principle of equivalence.
The Administrative Litigation Chamber stressed that the FEHT was unable to prove its allegations regarding the violation of this principle, with the criteria of the defendant administration prevailing over the subjective opinion of the plaintiff. With this ruling, there are now two appeals filed by the FEHT that have been rejected in tax matters by the Mogán City Council. The other appeal rejected was in relation to the modification of the Fiscal Ordinance Regulating the Tax on Real Estate (IBI). In total, the City Council has been victorious in four judicial proceedings in tax matters filed by the hotel sector, all of them with express condemnation in costs.
