The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has suspended in a very precautionary manner the ordinance of the City Council of Mogán (Gran Canaria), the first tourist tax in the Canary Islands for staying overnight in the accommodations of this municipality.
The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TSJC has made this decision at the request of the Federation of Hospitality and Tourism Entrepreneurs (FEHT) of Las Palmas through the urgent channel, without hearing the arguments that the affected consistory can present in defense of the rate, which now has three days to explain itself, something it will do, as confirmed minutes after the resolution was known.
This ordinance included the payment of a tax of 0.15 euros per night to all those people who stayed overnight in any tourist accommodation in the municipality, and which had been in force since last Tuesday, March 11, after being published by the Official Gazette of the Province on Monday.
The City Council of Mogán, through a statement, has assured that it was aware that this situation could occur, so once it is notified of the order of the TSJC in which it has adopted that decision, it will "appear before the judge or the court within three days to defend the aforementioned ordinance and that the very precautionary suspension measures can be withdrawn."
In its appeal to the TSJC, the FEHT justified the need to stop this ordinance in a very precautionary manner because the local corporation "committed innumerable irregularities, determining the radical nullity of the provision in question" and with terms that it considered "confusing" to the point of making it impossible for tourist establishments to correctly apply it.
The rapporteur of the order, the magistrate Francisco José Gómez de Lorenzo-Cáceres, has admitted "the weight of the arguments presented in order to justify the special urgency in the case" and that, in his opinion, tipped the balance towards the claims of the tourism employers.
According to the FEHT, "the imposition of this obligation on a very large number of affected parties implies establishing by infralegal rule an improper and disproportionate burden, which, for that very reason, would at least require regulation by formal law and a more detailed justification."
In addition, the employers' association delves into its appeal, the ordinance requires "an excessive effort and a complex task of information and documentation that is very difficult to comply with" for the establishments that have to apply it, which, in its opinion, violates the "principle of proportionality and minimization of indirect costs."
And that all this will cause "pernicious effects" for the tourist establishments of Mogán for the benefit of the neighboring municipalities that compete with them.
In short, the FEHT points out in its appeal, assumed by the TSJC, that this ordinance "imposes, with a utopian claim of immediacy, an endless number of new obligations, both formal and material" for those in charge of applying it, and that these obligations are so complex and of such a broad territorial and subjective scope of application that they become "completely unaffordable."
