Glenn Wickman
VALENCIA city council will update its books to increase income through IBI property tax.
Mayor Joan Ribo announced this week that incorrect or out-of-date information on the city books will be updated to weed out cases of property owners getting away with paying less than they should be.
City Hall has discovered that many buildings are incorrectly featured in the system, with wrong information about their size or purpose.
Under a new agreement signed between the council and the national land register authorities, Valencia City Hall will now be able to directly modify the information on every building in the city.
Valencia was one of the very few provincial capitals throughout Spain that had not yet taken this step.
This will enable the council to detect any properties that have not been correctly entered into the system or updated after expansion work or other changes that were not communicated to the authorities.
The final aim is for City Hall to begin charging the correct amount of property tax, which is said to be much lower than it should.
IBI is the main source of tax income for the city, accounting for €220 million last year – 25% of the total amount raised by the council.
As such, any minor alteration such as this could entail a significant boost for the public coffers without increasing taxes in general.
READ MORE:
