The Supreme Court has given leave to proceed for an appeal for annulment aimed at determining whether the body called to decide on an application for suspension of enforcement of a contested decision filed through a tax appeal board without providing well-founded guarantees that enforcement might lead to harm that is impossible or difficult to repair may reject the precautionary measure on considering that the documentation provided does not provide evidence that such harm may be caused or, prior to doing so, whether it must request that the applicant remedy the deficient justification.

The question lies in the fact that on receiving applications for suspension without guarantees, tax appeal boards often dismiss said application as they consider that the harm that enforcement might cause has not been sufficiently demonstrated. The effect of this dismissal is that the application is considered as not having been filed and therefore, given that the ruling arrives at the end of the voluntary payment period, the debt moves directly on to the enforcement period.

The appeal focuses on whether, after detecting that the alleged harm has not been demonstrated, the Board should require that the interested party remedy the application in a period of 10 days, as provided in Article 2.2 of the Regulation on Administrative Reviews, taking into account that the type of documentation that must be provided to prove the existence of harm that is impossible or difficult to repair is not specified, which leads to absolute uncertainty and insecurity for the taxpayer.

We now need to wait for the Supreme Court to rule on this appeal. If the appeal is upheld, this will surely come as a relief to taxpayers as they will be given a period of 10 days to remedy their application, and they will not be immediately forced into a collection enforcement procedure.

For further information, please contact:

Carla Cerdeira Rodriguez

carla.cerdeira@AndersenTaxLegal.es