The Supreme annuls a fine for having money abroad for the first time after the European ruling

The Supreme Court has studied for the first time the situation of people with hidden assets abroad after the sentence of the European Justice that knocked down the system of sanctions. The judges, who still have more resources ahead On more fringes of the matter, they have studied the case of a married couple who had two houses in Portugal and understand that this type of inspections and sanctions cannot be launched "without being subject to any limitation period", one of the things that the European justice.

The courts begin to return to the Tax Agency the first fines for hidden money in tax havens

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As explained by elDiario.es last May, the contentious-administrative chamber had begun to admit sanctioned person resources based on the sanctioning procedure launched by Cristóbal Montoro and the executive of Mariano Rajoy in 2012. A system of sanctions parallel to the fiscal amnesty for those who had hidden assets abroad and who suffered the same judicial fate. While the tax amnesty was annulled by the Constitutional Court, last January it was the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that annulled the system of sanctions.

The first case that this room has studied is that of a couple of businessmen from Extremadura who, between April and July 2013, declared before the Treasury that they had two properties in Portugal valued, in total, at 215,000 euros. They were sanctioned twice with a total of 133,000 euros for both infractions. His case went through the Superior Court of Extremadura, which annulled one of the sanctions, and reached the Supreme Court before the ruling of the CJEU, which was incorporated into the file this year.

The result is not a sentence that covers all the possible consequences of the European sentence on this type of procedure, but it does rule on one of its key aspects: the fact that the Administration's capacity to impose these sanctions does not prescribe, something which was described as “extremely repressive” by the CJEU.

The Supreme Court applies this to the case of sanctioned Extremadurans and explains that "a personal income tax settlement cannot be carried out without being subject to any limitation period" even if those capital gains have been brought to the attention of the Administration in an untimely manner. “There is no doubt that the application of the established doctrine, in light of the aforementioned ruling of the CJEU, to the accredited facts, corroborates that the alleged prescription has occurred”, settles the Supreme Court on the specific case.

The Supreme Court specifies that this ruling does not cover all the consequences of the CJEU resolution and, in fact, dedicates a specific section to explaining the "unresolved issues". For example, it explains the doubt about whether or not this European doctrine affects sanctions and firm resolutions, something that it does not resolve. They are issues, he says, of "great importance" but that "it is not possible to examine in this appeal because its object is circumscribed to the cleared question, which has determined the fate of this appeal."

According to the admission proceedings that elDiario.es has been able to examine, other cases will lead to other sentences to apply the European doctrine, for example, to the amount of the fines imposed by the Spanish regulations of 2012.