During its meeting on 31 May, the Spanish Cabinet agreed to lodge an appeal on constitutional grounds against Provincial Regulatory Decree 2/2013, of 26 February, which determines the application of new taxes in the province of Bizkaia. In particular, the provision established the application in Bizkaia of the latest different taxes introduced by the State in the sphere of the Common Tax System Territory: the tax on gaming activities, and the tax on deposits in credit institutions and the three energy taxes – on electricity production, on the production of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from nuclear power generation, and on the storage of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste in centralised facilities.

The appeal will be first time that the reform introduced in the regulations of the Constitutional Court brought about by Act 2/2010, of 19 February, known as the “shielding of the Basque Economic Agreement”, has been applied. Pursuant to that legislation, any challenges to the provincial tax legislation came under the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court to the detriment of the ordinary court system. As is known, that Act is pending analysis by the Court itself, in the light of the appeals submitted by the Autonomous Communities of La Rioja and of Castilla-León.

Press release from the Spanish Cabinet

Hello again,

As you already know, during the last month, we have been working on different points that affect the website contents in order to take into account some of your suggestions. The website will be fully operational as of today and we will continue to keep you up to date on the Economic Agreement.

You will find two main brand-new aspects to the new website.

The first is a new Library section under the “Documentation” heading.  The section is structured into 6 sub-categories and you will find reference lists of the books and even, in the cases where we have managed to obtain them, a pdf of the index of the book. We have initially tried to include the most basic bibliography, but we will continue to add to it as we find further references. We strongly urge you to send us any references that you believe are worth sharing.

The second refers to a new Documentation search engine, which solves the limitations detected in the earlier ones, such as the titles of the records, the power to perform searches with special characters (such as the ñ) and searches with accents.  You will find cleared and more comprehensive records with contents distributed by fields and by lists and where the option to download the document is shown in a more user-friendly way.

There are also more features when performing searches and you can filter not only by category, but also by other fields such as authors, key subjects, etc.

By the way, you will find that the latest news item on last Friday’s Seminar has been repeated during the migration from one system to another.  Please accept our apologies.

Thank you.

We are going to update certain contents of the website and its structure over the coming days.  We are basically going to add a new search engine for the Documentation section and a new section  featuring the  Bibliography of the Economic Agreement. Therefore, during approximately a month, we are not going to add new contents to the website. We will notify you using this alert service once the new features are up and running.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

The Bizkaia TEAF, in both agreements, determines the connection point applicable to the withholdings and interim payments regarding the transfer or reimbursement of shares and equity interests representing the share capital or equity of collective investment institutions. It likewise highlights the connection point in Inheritance and Donation Tax in the case of an inheritance agreement, after quality the legal transaction has been classified as a donation.

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The Board of Arbitration of the Economic Agreement is continuing with its work to resolve all the competence disputes raised by the different administrations.

Specifically, its Rulings 3 and 19 of 2012 set out its criteria when assessing the determining de facto aspects to locate the centre of effective management and the place where the administrative management and running of the business takes place, conducting a joint assessment of the evidence submitted, which may shed light on subsequent cases.

 In Rulings 5 and 6 of 2012, the Board sets out its interpretation of Article 43.8 of the Agreement for those cases where there is a transfer of the registered office and subsequent takeover, as the result of a business restructuring operation.

In Ruling 16/2012, regarding the retroactive effects of a change of address, the Board rejects the argument that they are limited to periods or years that open for review.

Finally, Ruling 17/2012 establishes the criteria regarding the envisaged period for lodging the dispute, in those cases where there is possible breach of the duty of cooperation by the administration that may be deemed incompetent, when, for other circumstances accredited in the proceedings, the party claiming competence knows of measures implemented by the former.

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