Piran

Our elderly friend of 77, a widow, has just received her I.B.I., and she is wondering how she can pay it. She lives in a modest 3 bed, 2 bath villa just outside Vinuela. Her new I.B.I. is now over 500 euros and included was a demand for 1000 euros arrears.
This seems a gross increase, especially considering that many people in older houses in most villages pay no rates at all.
Could it be that foreigners are being targeted to pay for the present crisis?
What advice can we give her?
Is there any way in which we can find out if foreigners are being discriminated against, such as a rough idea of the I.B.I. paid by each household?

DLC

The thing is previous years IBIs had nothing to do with reality as town halls got their income from selling land to constructors. Now construction has ground to a halt the money's got to come from somewhere.

As you can imagine it's not the easiest thing to work out. You need the valor catastral which is worked out from the valor suelo (land value) and valor construcción (building value). It usually turns out at about half the market value of the property, but lately that's been going down. You can find this information on the IBI bill they send you or you can look it up on the web if she's got a certificado digital or you can go to a Punto de Información Catastral. You'll need the referencia catastral. There's just been a revision in many parts of the country, and you can probably guess who benefits.

You also need the tipo impositivo which is a ratio fixed every year by the town hall. There are legal limits, Wikipedia says 0.4%-1.10% (urban), 0.3%-0.90% (rustic), and 0.6% + a value between 0.4%-1.3% (special).

Then you multiply the two together and that's your answer.

Check that the data on the IBI bill is what central government (Catastro) says. Check the tipo impositivo is the right one and in the legal limits. And be wary of arrears, check they haven't decided to revise bills from last year upwards using this year's data.

More info in Spanish:

http://www.idealista.com/news/archiv...ecta-su-subida

snikpoh

.... how do you know this? I have many (Spanish) friends with old houses in villages and they ALL have to pay IBI.

One friend has a property that he inherited from a relative many years ago. It is all but a pile of stones - he still has to pay IBI

pwwm

Evryone here also pays rates, here we all had rates increases over last cpuple of years, maybe if she speaks to the office they mightlet her pay in instalments, I know they do here

Lynn R

I live in Velez-Malaga (not far from Vinuela) in a 3 bed 2 bath townhouse with no garden or land, and my IBI bill last year was over 400€, so the amount your friend is being asked to pay doesn't seem excessive by comparison. What has led to large increases in IBI bills in some areas is the fact that catastral values have been revised (after several years of staying the same) and that could be what has happened in Vinuela. It certainly did in Velez 4 years ago - nothing to do with being foreigners whatsoever, I do think people can get a bit paranoid about conspiracy theories in that respect.

In Velez a discount scheme was introduced by the Ayuntamiento when the catastral values were increased, whereby if you applied and met the criteria you would not have to pay any more than 10% of the increase, and that has continued every year since. Last year my discount was about 160€. The only criteria were that the house had to be your permanent residence, you had to be on the padron as at 1 January and have no outstanding debts to the Ayuntamiento. It might be worth your friend enquiring if Vinuela has anything similar (although unfortunately it can't be claimed retrospectively). In fact Vinuela might come within the Velez-Malaga municipality, I'm not sure.

amideislas

Ours went up, too.

God forbid that we'd ever want to provide any incentive to buy real estate here.
Remember what happened last time? better to penalise anyone who dares to buy real estate.

Contribucion went up too, which was required to pay for the beautiful new pont verde which was built by the construction firm owned by the brother-in-law of the politician who led the charge to have it built, only to be shut down because nobody wanted to drive 7Km to dump their rubbish and were just tossing it in the streets.

Thankfully, the rubbish bins are back on every street corner now and people are no longer tossing their rubbish on the street. I also hated driving all that way... No doubt the politician's brother in law is pleased, too.

Piran

Many thanks for all the replies, which has eased my worries some. I will tell her regarding the possibility of a rebate/reduction, but it may not be for that area.
Regarding how I know about some older houses not paying rates? I was told by a councillor, who also said that if it wasn't for the foreigners, some town halls would be broke.
I'd love to believe that Spain had a 'level playing field' in such matters, but something tells me it may never be so.

cricketman

Yes, your own bigottry!

Think about it...

Fredbargate

Can you name a Spanish Town Hall that isn't broke?

Loco Pedro

Els Poblets !

anonimouse

Rates have trebled

britishbull

no doubt, like the Uk there will be relief for locals who are unemployed so expect it to rise rapidly for those who can afford to pay - still a long way to catch up with UK council tax rates - and they are quite nasty if you miss payments in Spain

Lynn R

The discount scheme introduced in my area to alleviate the effects of the catastral revision took no account of people's income or ability to pay, which quite surprised me. The only area where you might say that foreigners could pay a disproportionately large amount is that there is no discount available if the property is not your main residence, so second home owners have to pay the full amount.

The amount of the discount was smaller for properties whose catastral value was over a certain amount, however, so those who could afford to own the largest properties pay more.

Bri and Katee

We've never paid rates yet! After buying in 2006 and pleading with the local town hall for 4 years to pay them, this included several letters on our behalf from our solicitors. The official answer has always been the same, wait for the official notification!

So on advice from the solicitor, who has all the correspondence, we sit back and wait, they can only claw back the previous four years so just wait

Fred James

True, but that won't stop them from fining you for not paying, even if they didn't issue a demand.

Been there, done that!