The High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has declared the new waste collection tax of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria City Council null and void by upholding an appeal filed by the Canaria Escuelas de Antúnez Foundation against the ordinance that regulates it, approved by the plenary in April 2024.
In a ruling provided to EFE this Friday, "deficiencies" are noted in the criteria used to quantify and distribute the tax and in the economic-financial report on which it is based, as it "does not adequately fulfill" the function of justifying the real or foreseeable cost of the service, and the criteria used for its distribution among taxpayers.
The first section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TSJC has upheld the appeal defended by the law firm Acosta y Navarro, which also managed to annul the waste ordinance of the Madrid City Council.
In its appeal, the Foundation argued that the ordinance violates the principles of economic capacity and equality, by not providing for exemptions or bonuses for non-profit subsidized educational centers, entities covered by Law 49/2002, and other subjects that enjoy tax benefits on local taxes such as IBI or IAE.
Likewise, it pointed out that the new tax diverts resources intended for the provision of educational services and is contrary to the favorable tax regime for this type of entity, and questions the "insufficient motivation" of the technical-economic study that serves as the basis for the ordinance.
This is because studies on waste production carried out in Catalonia were used to determine the new generation fee without having published them or made them available to interested parties during the processing of the procedure, which made it impossible to verify their adequacy to the reality of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and to formulate allegations.
On this matter, the Chamber has found that the requirements of "motivation, publicity, and information" were not met during the processing of the ordinance, and that furthermore, the technical-economic report does not explicitly state the specific impact of the data in determining the fees, nor how they were contrasted with the information available on the effective provision of the service in the municipality of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Therefore, the TSJC has considered that there is an "absence of sufficient justification" in the technical-economic report regarding "its suitability" as a reference parameter to support the cost allocation provided for in the ordinance.
Furthermore, it has argued that the studies used to support the applied methodology were not incorporated into the file submitted to the public information procedure, even though the administration itself acknowledges their use as a reference element to determine the fee linked to waste generation, which prevented the formulation of "sufficiently informed" allegations during that period.
And this is because "said documents played a significant role in the configuration of the variable fee provided for in the ordinance," according to the ruling, which recalls that the High Court of Justice of Madrid declared the 2024 waste tax ordinance null and void for not fully publishing the technical-economic report.
The Chamber added that in the case of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria ordinance, the justification of the criteria used for the distribution of fixed costs of the service is also "insufficient".
Specifically, it alluded to the lack of explanation of the reasons why it is considered appropriate to attribute the same fixed fee to realities as different as homes, holiday homes, hotel accommodation units, or commercial establishments, and the justification for disregarding other differentiating parameters that the technical documentation considers as possible distribution criteria.
The TSJC has emphasized that the deficiencies it has noted "do not relate to accessory aspects of the ordinance, but to the very criteria used to quantify and distribute the tax burden," and therefore the economic-financial report does not fulfill its function.
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