The review of tax administrative acts; special reference to the mandatory internal administrative appeal of the Royal Decree Law 2/2004, after the entrance into force of Law 39/2015
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
In the field of review of administrative acts, in the local level it is possible to find all the typologies of review provided by Law 39/2015, based on the scheme of the derogated Law 30/1992: the administrative appeal, the voluntary internal administrative appeal and the extraordinary administrative appeal. However, the most common type of review is the internal administrative appeal because most of the challenged administrative acts exhaust all the administrative remedies. This continuity of the scheme of Law 30/1992 is recognized in the preamble of Law 39/2015 whose wording refers to the categories of the existing administrative remedies: “the law preserves the ex officio review and the typology of the administrative remedies currently in force”. This typology of remedies must be understood always in accordance with Law 7/1985, of 2 April, on the basic State laws of local administration. The sectorial legislation on local taxes is established by Royal Decree 2/2004, of 5 March. This legislation articulates an internal administrative appeal against tax administrative acts which is mandatory except for big cities regulated on Title X of Law 7/1985. Beyond the internal administrative appeal –mandatory or voluntary– and the economic-administrative complaint, articles 110 of Law 7/1985 and 14 of Royal Decree Law 2/2004, both echoing the General Tax Law, allow the review of local tax administrative acts trough the following proceedings: review of null and void acts (article 217 General Tax Law); declaration of adverse effects of acts susceptible of annulment (article 218 General Tax Law); revocation of application of tax acts (article 219 General Tax Law); rectification of errors (article 220 General Tax Law) and refund of wrongful deposits (article 221 General Tax Law). We are not before a uniform review system because it diverges depending on we are dealing with a big or not city. On the other hand, the legal framework is established in different legal texts: General Tax Law and its normative acts of execution; Law 7/1985; Royal Decree Law 2/2004; local tax ordinances of each municipality; and the organic norms of big cities regulating the administrative bodies in charge of deciding the economic-administrative complaints. However, there is no contradiction between the voluntary internal administrative appeal of Law 39/2015 and the mandatory internal administrative appeal of Royal Decree Law 2/2004 because the First Additional Provision of Law 39/2015 establishes the following: “the administrative proceedings regulated in special legislation because of their matter which do not require the proceedings established in this Law or provides additional or different proceedings will be regulated by this special legislation”.