The Tías City Council has approved an ambitious reform of the tax ordinance for Real Estate I.B.I. to adapt it to the Housing Law, approved by the progressive Government of Pedro Sánchez, Law 12/2023, of May 24.
With this measure we intend, among other things, that neighbors with a house where they reside, and large real estate assets for tourist use, or ultra-rich, no longer pay the same tax rate.
Until now, a linear type of I.B.I. was paid equally whether you had a residential house in Tías, La Tiñosa, La Asomada, Conil, Masdache, Mácher or Tegoyo, than a large hotel on the beachfront.
The data from the Association of Tourist Municipalities of the Canary Islands AMTC indicate that the number of overnight stays in Tías per year is 7,036,098. The number of visitors who have passed through the municipality in a year is 1,036,098 people. In addition, the César Manrique Lanzarote airport receives more than 5 million tourists a year. However, the resident neighbors, and taxpayers, of the municipality of Tías are only 21,462.
It is unsustainable from an economic point of view that such magnificent data from the tourism industry, with all the services and public spending it requires, and the urban and environmental wear and tear it entails, is sustained only by the taxes of the residents. We must all support public services progressively.
This measure is, in a way, the closest thing to a tourist tax that the Law allows us, while we continue to wait for the Government of the Canary Islands or the Cabildo of Lanzarote and La Graciosa to decide to take similar measures.
The rigidity of the Law of Local Finances and the Law of Local Bases has been totally distorted in terms of resources per population, by not taking into account the floating population of tourist destinations and the number of people who pass through their streets. So dire is the economic situation in tourist municipalities, without a different financial or legal status, (as exists for example for large cities), that we are only governed by the general framework of the Law of Local Finances for all municipalities in Spain without distinction.
The surcharge on the tax rate established by the new I.B.I. tax ordinance of Tías to the largest tourist properties will be used to compensate the society of the municipality of Tías for the environmental and social cost of the industry, social aid, rental aid for users of Social Welfare in social exclusion (many of them workers in the tourism industry itself), and to alleviate the precariousness of work involved in the exercise of certain activities that in turn deteriorate the environment in the territory of the municipality.
All this without forgetting the investment in improving the competitiveness of the tourism sector, betting on sustainable, responsible and quality tourism in the municipality.
Another of the progressive measures introduced in this fiscal reform is a new 95% bonus of the I.B.I. for real estate for residential use intended for housing rental with income limited by a legal norm, for example, declaration of a stressed area, or Officially Protected Housing (VPO) of new private promotion.
We thus become the first municipality on the island of Lanzarote to adapt its tax regulations to the Housing Law.
The reports of the municipal technicians of Social Welfare of Tías, who know and analyze the social and housing situation in the municipality of Tías, recommend that we take measures.
It should be remembered that Tías already requested the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands, by agreement, plenary to declare itself a stressed area, without the Government of the Canary Islands having taken action to date.
Faced with the dire housing situation, and the housing emergency, the only response is the inaction of the Government of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo of Lanzarote and La Graciosa formed by the Canarian Coalition and the Popular Party.
In Tías, where the left governs, we have moved to action.