The Catalan Tax Agency (ATC) is also wrong. It can happen to anyone; But if the mistake means paying more than necessary, it hurts. This is what happened to Sergio Lainz, a taxpayer who has had a long experience until Hisenda recognized the error, as it asked him to pay one and a half times more than what he was due for the CO2 tax on his car. “I ask other taxpayers to review the notifications they receive because they may pay more for the CO2 tax than necessary,” says this retired photographer.
Lainz has made quite the journey to gather the evidence that has confirmed his suspicions.
In his case, the alarms went off when he received a notification that required him to pay 228.7 euros for the CO2 tax on his vehicle (a 2005 gasoline BMW). He thought that the sum was excessive and he went to complain to the Agency’s offices. There, an official told him that the period to review the vehicle registry had passed and that the fee to be paid was set by ATC with the information on CO2 emissions sent to him by the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT). And so began his pilgrimage…
In order to support the appeal he wanted to present, he went to the DGT with the aim of getting them to certify what the real emissions of his car were; and there they told him that, since it was a vehicle before 2015, it lacked the technical sheet with that information. He then went to a BMW dealership but the price they asked for the certificate was so exorbitant (more than 200 euros) that he rejected the proposal. Even in his Kafkaesque journey he went in vain, with the same intention, to his ITV.
Until, after many fruitless steps, he learned that he could review the real emissions of his vehicle by comparing them in the PDF lists published by the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, where all the models and versions of cars, accompanied by their corresponding CO2 emissions.
And from that review, he detected the error. The ATC had assigned his BMW 356 gr/CO2/km, while his car model only emitted 225 gr/CO2/km. “They charged me as if my car were the most expensive in the BMW range on the IDAE list,” he complains, convinced that this mistake could be repeated by other taxpayers.
Thus, he gathered the evidence, filed an appeal and won, so that he had to pay much less: 87 euros.
But its surprises did not end there. Already an expert in the matter, he verified that the tax employer’s simulator estimated that he should pay 90 euros. And yet, they charged him less! Because?
In the resolution to his appeal, the ATC indicates that (to set the fee to pay) an estimate had been made based on the logarithm designed by the Barcelona Supercomputing computer (formula provided in the law), which takes into account the category , type of fuel and so on.
And great paradox! What he had to pay (the 87 euros) is exactly the amount of emissions that – as he saw later – tells him in the instruction book of the car he bought at the time: “that document that no one reads,” he says. .
Sources from the Department of Economy and Hisenda emphasize that every May a provisional registry is published, with vehicle data, since much of the basic information comes from other administrations. The Tax Agency of Catalonia (ATC) displays in this provisional register the data provided by the General Directorate of Traffic so that it can be verified that they are correct.
Specifically, the DGT provides information on the CO2 emissions of all new vehicles, specifically those that have a technical sheet, mandatory for all those registered from 2015 onwards; and, in the case of vehicles older than that date, on many occasions, the DGT provides the information collected in the guides of the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDEA), which has an exhaustive list of vehicle brands. vehicles and a wide range of models with their corresponding CO2 emissions, marketed since 2002
On other occasions, when the DGT does not provide any information on emissions, it is the autonomous administration itself that incorporates the IDAE data; and when it does not have – for whatever reason – any of this information, it calculates the amount of CO2 emissions emitted by the vehicle based on a complex logarithmic formula that has been designed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and is included in law. who created the tax.
The ATC cannot provide information on individuals, and it is most likely that in this case the error was presumably due to the fact that the data offered by the IDAE guides and their vehicle lists are not as precise as would be required, since there are many vehicle models with different characteristics (depending on displacement, engine, weight, among other variables), which makes it possible that incorrect entries may occur.
“This data is entered automatically. There is no official who does it. We are talking about millions of vehicles,” they point out from the Department of Economy.
Hisenda sources rule out that there are widespread errors and even add that in most cases the option that is most beneficial for the taxpayer is applied.
The number of allegations presented in Catalonia against the CO2 tax is “anecdotal” compared to the vehicle fleet, which is why the Generalitat estimates that its application is being correct, the same sources add.
In 2023, only 66 allegations related to emissions were estimated against the CO2 tax, while the car fleet in Catalonia is made up of 4.8 million, which represents 0.0015% of the total.
Furthermore, not all of them pay (those with a 100% discounted fee should not do so, such as historic vehicles, classics or those with a fee of less than 6 euros), so the number is reduced to 1, 7 million vehicles).
The average fee that taxpayers usually pay for the CO2 tax in Catalonia is between 11 and 12 euros per vehicle. In total, the Generalitat raised 43 million euros last year, a figure lower than initially planned because the Government delayed its implementation and froze it so as not to harm families during the Covid pandemic.
“The objective of this tax is not revenue collection. To the extent that cleaner cars circulate with fewer emissions, the revenue from this tax will decrease,” they recall.
Of the 4.8 million vehicles registered in the provisional registry, 50% had a technical sheet, 36% found the information referring to emissions in the IDAE guides and, for the remaining 15%, the resulting quota was calculated from the formula designed by the BSC.
