The strategy of absolute silence regarding tax inspection reports is a direct path to financial collapse in the Canary Islands. The Canary Islands Economic-Administrative Board (JEAC) has issued a resolution dismissing in its entirety the appeals filed by the company against a massive regularization of unpaid Canary Islands General Indirect Tax (IGIC) installments. The quasi-judicial court's ruling upholds the charges imposed by the Tax Inspection Unit, consolidating a total debt of €149.475,46, including tax assessments, accrued late payment interest, and penalties for serious tax offenses committed during the 2022 fiscal year.
The finality of this resolution by the plenary session of the Economic-Administrative Board exhausts all administrative remedies within the autonomous community. The inspected company faces a scenario of forced execution or asset seizure if it does not provide the corresponding bond to file an administrative appeal. The outcome of this case serves as a stark warning to businesses in southern Gran Canaria about the risks of ignoring electronic notifications from the Canary Islands Tax Agency—an operational oversight that eliminates any chance of legal success, even in the case of tax assessments that may contain initial calculation errors.
The company's financial decline began to take shape in the first quarter of 2024 following a forensic audit of its accounting records related to its IGIC (Canary Islands General Indirect Tax) returns for the period between January 2022 and January 2023. Inspectors from the Canary Islands Tax Agency detected a systematic underpayment in the mandatory quarterly payments, issuing a formal notice of disagreement for a principal shortfall of €74.907,56, plus €4.840,06 in penalty interest. The company's inaction with the tax authorities aggravated the administrative proceedings, leading to the opening of a penalty procedure under Article 191.1 of the General Tax Law (LGT) after it was confirmed that the company had deliberately failed to pay the taxes within the legal deadlines, resulting in an additional net fine of €69.727,84.
The legal peculiarity of the JEAC's ruling lies in the company's waiver of its right to a defense and to challenge the alleged facts. The appellant failed to submit any written arguments in its defense, both during the preliminary stages before the Provincial Chief Inspector and during the one-month period for submitting allegations and proposing evidence before the Regional Economic-Administrative Court. The Board's resolution emphasizes that the complete absence of argumentation deprives the reviewing body of the minimum elements required to challenge the reasoning of the original inspection, thus adopting the grounds of the regularization report given the lack of any obvious formal defects or manifest illegalities in the sanctioning procedure.
The court bases its dismissal on a solid and consistent line of jurisprudence validated by the Administrative Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) in Las Palmas. The rulings cited by the presiding judge clarify that, while the omission of allegations does not equate to a withdrawal of the claim, it does leave the judges in a state of cognitive uncertainty regarding the subject matter of the litigation. The opinion emphasizes that the economic courts do not operate as administrative offices that must carry out the investigative work on behalf of negligent taxpayers, thus ratifying the Supreme Court's doctrine that considers the conduct of companies that resort to legal action without detailing the substantive grounds for their appeal to be reckless.
