DEMONSTRATION. More than 7,000 people took to the streets last March in Estepona to protest against the IBI increase. / JOSELE-LANZA
Other taxes affected by the new values
Municipalities in the province of Malaga are updating their catastral registers, the lists of property values which are used for taxation purposes. This will mean that thousands of residents are likely to see their housing tax, or IBI, increase significantly. Average property values are expected to go up by between 80 and 300 per cent in some towns, although some residents have already seen that the new value given to their property is more than ten times the old one.
In order to soften the impact of the revaluation of the catastral values on the tax, the law states that the difference between the new and old values can be applied a tenth at a time, so that the total new value will not be reflected on the IBI bill until ten years’ time. What’s more some local authorities are compensating in part for the increase by reducing the rate used to calculate the tax, although this depends entirely on the goodwill of each Town Hall.
Marbella
Marbella Town Hall plans to take the necessary measures to make sure that the increase in the IBI does not exceed inflation. Nevertheless any measures to be taken will not be finalised until the municipal budget for next year has been announced.
The catastral values have not been updated in Marbella for 20 years and therefore the IBI increase, if applied all in one go, would be considerable. If applied over the space of ten years, as the law allows, the increase will be more gradual. Marbella Town Hall realises that the situation is a little different to that of other places in the province. As the catastral register has not been updated for 20 years the difference between the values currently used to calculate the IBI and today’s market value is huge.
Malaga
In the city of Malaga the average increase in the catastral value of a property could be 127 per cent, although this may increase to 276 per cent in the case of empty plots. Here the City Hall has also reassured home owners that the tax will not go up any more than inflation rate being applied to the rest of the local taxes, that is the RPI of last May, 4.6 per cent.
According to the city councillor responsible for Finance and Taxation, Carolina España, the IBI increase will be calculated using discounts to avoid the bills going up in excess of inflation, during the first three years.
Following the angry reactions of residents in Vélez-Málaga and Estepona to steep IBI rises, other municipalities also aim to cushion the effects as much as possible.
Problems
In municipalities where the revaluation has already taken place a number of formulas have been used to provide compensation. In Benalmádena, for example, where the catastral register was updated in 2006, discounts were made available to what they called “exemplary citizens”, that is, those who were registered on the official population census and who had no outstanding debts with the Town Hall.
In Torremolinos the values were updated in 2002 and the Town Hall approved IBI subsidies for property owners who had been on the population census for more than two years. Nevertheless the Andalusian High Court has recently cancelled this measure after a group of home owners not registered on the census appealed against it.