On Friday 24 April, the seminar entitled Tax-financial Relations under the Basque Economic Agreement System: the Basque Provinces, the Basque Autonomous Community, Kingdom of Spain, European Union will be held at Bizkaia Aretoa, Avenida Abandoibarra nº 3 in Bilbao The seminar has been organised by the Basque Economic Agreement Documentation Centre and by the Basque Provincial Tax Offices in conjunction with the Public Law and Tax Financial Law Departments of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

Programme

Bizkaia Provincial Council and the University of Nevada in Reno has signed a agreement, for an initial renewable term of two years, in order to foster and disseminate research into the Economic Agreement of the Basque Country and comparable federal tax systems internationally, by means of activities organised by the Center for Basque Studies (CBS). Under this Agreement, a career civil servant from the Provincial Council will join the CBS each year for a three month period. At the end of which, they will submit a detailed report on the activities carried out during their stay both to Bizkaia Provincial Council and to the CBS. The CBS will organise a one-day seminar and the guest professional will carry out research tasks, give a paper at that seminar and will write an article or a chapter of a book in English to be published. The visitor will also teach as a guest lecturer on courses on taxes and tax culture run by the Economics Department at the UNR. Following a selection process, the Head of Fiscal Policy Unit at the Department of the Treasury and Finances, Gemma Martínez Bárbara, has joined the CBS.

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In February, Deustche Bank’s Research Department published a interesting paper on the economic aspects of different independence and regionalist movements within the member countries of the European Union. It focuses, specifically, on analysis those phenomena in Spain (the Basque Country, Navarra and Catalonia), the United Kingdom (Scotland), Belgium (Flanders) and Italy (Alto Adige and Veneto).

Document 

The Spanish Central Government, through the regulatory enactment of the amendment of Article 167 of the VAT Act, implemented through Act 28/2014, of 27 November, and in the exercising of their exclusive competence to regulate the import duties coming under the Excise Duties and under Valued Added Tax, is denying the taxpayers who exclusively pay taxes to the Basque and Navarre provincial tax authorities what other tax payers are permitted to do: the possibility of being eligible for a system to settle VAT on imports that, unlike the situation in force until the reform, allows the quotas of those operations to be included in the relevant returns, instead of directly paying them to the customs at the time of clearing the goods. Iñaki Alonso Arce has pointed this out in the latest issue (205) of Forum Fiscal and describes the decision adopted as “unjustifiable  discrimination of Basque and Navarre provincial taxpayers”.

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The latest issue of the Revista Vasca de Administración Pública includes different articles on different issues relating to the Basque Economic Agreement system.

From the European perspective, Susana Serrano Gazteluurrutia analyses the application of the legitimate expectations principle in the process to recover the so-called tax holidays, while Sofía Arana Landín delves further into the practical problems for the Basque provinces when it comes to adapting the Community tax directives and their limited participation in the upstream process in the adopting of those provisions.

As regards local budget control, Martín María Razquin Lizarraga analyses the effects of the local reform in the Basque Autonomous Community and the limitations arising from the Local Sustainability and Rationality Act, and concludes that there is a pressing need for a Basque Municipal Act to be approved. Ander Ibarloza Arrizabalaga et al focus their study on the financial situation of the Gipuzkoa local council and the exercising of the budget control powers by the entities of the Provincial Council.

José Luis Burlada Echeveste analyses the consequences of different rulings relating to the common administrative procedure being considered as the exclusive competence of the Spanish State, in the light of Article 149.1.18 of the Spanish Constitution, and its impact on the Provincial General Tax Legislation. Irune Suberbiola Garbizu, finally, focuses his study on the agreement regarding the Gaming Tax and the connection points agreed to levy it.

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