In recent months the Board of Arbitration of the Economic Agreement has issued a number of rulings that have been uploaded to the website. Chief among them are rulings numbers 10 and 11, 2013, in which the Board supports the opposite criterion to that defended by the company and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, and does not accept the division of invoicing by integrated tariffs with one part corresponding to distribution operations and the other to energy sales for the purposes of determining the point of connection of deliveries of electricity and the location of the corresponding operations.

Under the heading of tax queries, the Regulatory Assessment and Coordination Committee has issued three answers in which it deliberates the point of connection applicable to certain formal obligations, the point of connection in the transport of goods by sea and the application of deductions for the purchase of a principal place of residence in cases involving moves to the territory governed by the common tax authorities.

Go to administrative doctrine

In a ruling issued on October 14 last, the Supreme Court declared null and void the administrative procedures intended to require the recovery of the aid known as “fiscal holidays”, declared incompatible with the common market, on the grounds that the acting administration – in this case the Provincial Council of Araba-Álava – and issued the corresponding settlements directly, omitting the prior hearing procedure required under general principles of Community law.

For its part, the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country has ruled as lawful the action taken by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia for supplementary enforcement measures to recover the fiscal aid declared incompatible with the common market, to adapt it actions to the requirements of the Commission in the process ongoing at the Court of Justice concerning the non-fulfilment by the Basque authorities of the obligation to recover the said amounts, and thus avoid the imposition of multi-million euro fines.

Go to jurisprudence 

In a ruling of 28 October 2013 the Director of the Basque Institute of Public Administration (IVAP) has published the decision of the Jury of the “Jesús María Leizaola 2013” Prize for research into Basque autonomy, to award it ex aequo to Gemma Martínez Bárbara, Head of the Tax Policy Service of Bizkaia Provincial Council and a volunteer contributor to this website, for her paper entitled “Tax Harmonisation and Provincial Taxing Power in the Basque Autonomous Community” and to Saioa Artiach Camacho, who also works for the Provincial Council, for her paper entitled “Procedural and Substantive Aspects of the Rural Lease Contract in the Civil Law of Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa from 16th to 19th Centuries. A Means to Manage the Equity of the Individual“.

The 2013 edition of Anuario Fiscal para Abogados [“Fiscal yearbook for Lawyers”], published by LA LEY, includes a contribution by Deloitte partner Pablo Sanz Gutierrez in which he analyses the latest trends in jurisprudence concerning the concept of state aid and their application to Basque tax regulations and the process for appealing against them, as contained in the ruing of the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country (TSJPV) dated 29 June, 2012.

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In the latest issue of the Forum Fiscal de Bizkaia, Iñaki Alonso Arce discusses the ruling by the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country on the legal adequacy of the precautionary complementary execution of the recovery of state subsidies in order to avoid the hefty fines sought by the European Commission at the Luxembourg Court.

Ruling

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