IBI taxes, a blow well below the belt!

THE IBI tax charges are being sent out. Before you open your letter, I suggest you sit down, preferably in a small sealed room wherein you can shut the door so that others near won’t hear the scream nor the well intended expletives that will soon follow. It is a blow well below the belt buckle. It is right in that strategic part of the pants—your pockets.

IBI is ‘supposed to reflect’ the incremental increased valuation of your property during the past years. In reality, the entire property market has existed in the doldrums. The tax people should be paying you for staying put!  Rather, they have increased their charges.

And not just by 5-8 per cent but sometimes as much as 400 per cent.

IBI is the money that keeps the town halls rolling. Since they can hire or spend any unrestricted amount of money during the long year on consultancy experts, large sums can flow from the town hall who is never held accountable.

Just recently the central governments have begun restricting the careless amounts thrown about by town halls without their fear of consequence or recrimination. For example, Almeria city is in debt just €62 million. Be happy you don’t live there.

Can you guess what their IBI charges are going to be?

It’s always been one of the foibles of democracy that might just elect the most popular candidate who knows nothing about balancing the books or actually running a large corporation, which a town hall is.

Or, worse yet, the poor voters might have voted in a mayor that awards plenty of contractual work to his friends at unrealistic prices.

Can you think of a more pertinent reason for getting registered and voting? The uncontrolled spending trends can easily continue and it’s you that will be paying for it.

OK, we have to pay taxes and die; two enviable rules. What do we get in return? There is no mainline sewage in the entire area. Much of it still being jettisoned out to the sea in which all the tourists swim.

Pavement and road repair? Fireworks at fair time? The beaches do get cleaned. Rubbish collection we pay for anyway. Snow removal?

Well, someone better find out. In the worse world economical shutdown since money was first coined in 600 BC, taxes have gone up – for what?