The AEAT’s refusal to return to the service stations the 20 cents bonus they paid in advance
As you may recall on March 30, 2022, the Royal Decree-Law 6/2022, of March 29, 2022, adopting urgent measures within the framework of the National Plan of response to the economic and social consequences of the war in Ukraine, was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE).
Chapter VI regulated the extraordinary and temporary bonus of 0.20 euros on fuel supplies.This temporary bonus was extended only for the transport sector (hauliers) in two phases: the first with a discount of 20 euro cents per liter of fuel consumed between January 1 and March 31, and the second with a bonus of 10 euro cents between April 1 and June 30.This temporary bonus was extended only for the transport sector (hauliers) in two phases: the first with a discount of 20 euro cents per liter of fuel consumed between January 1 and March 31, and the second with a bonus of 10 euro cents between April 1 and June 30.
The system was set up in such a way that, incredibly, service stations have had to advance and bear these bonuses and, subsequently, request their reimbursement from the Tax Agency.
At present, the AEAT or the TEAR are resolving numerous requests for refund or reimbursement of the amounts advanced by the service stations, although in many cases we are finding that the refund request has a negative response from the AEAT.
In many of these cases, the AEAT refuses to refund or reimburse the amounts due to the service station’s untimely presentation of the request for reimbursement.
Applications had to be submitted within the first 15 calendar days of the months following the month of the supplies to which the service station applied the rebate.
When the owner of the service station did not submit the request within that period, the AEAT’s response is:
“we are very sorry, we keep your money”.
The most serious aspect of this matter is that in several cases we have found that many of these matters have been submitted to the TEAR (Economic-Administrative Courts) and, surprisingly, the response of the TEAR has been the same as that of the AEAT:
“We’re sorry, we’ll keep your money”.
In this way, the TEAR are legitimizing an alleged unjust enrichment right by the Administration, an unjust enrichment that is completely prohibited by our jurisprudence and by our Highest Court (the Supreme Court).
In other words, according to the TEARs, the Administration has the right to be unjustly enriched at your expense. It is as simple as that.
As it is obvious, in a matter of mere formality, in which it is not denied that such supplies have been made, it is not denied that the corresponding tax credit was applied to those supplies, the “bad payer” response of both the AEAT and the TEAR is unbelievable. It does not seem that the tax practice is the most correct in this case.
At Casajuana Abogados we are already filing numerous administrative appeals against this type of negative resolutions because we cannot tolerate the legitimization of an alleged right of the Administration to unjust enrichment at the expense of the taxpayer.
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