Rates relief for Teulada

TEULADA is the first Marina Alta town to comply with a Supreme court ruling on IBI rates.

Based on a test case in Extremadura, this concluded that rustic land reclassified for building cannot be charged at urban rates until it is developed.

This decision holds good throughout Spain but few town halls have yet put it into practice.

Many Teulada-Moraira landowners have been paying IBI at urban rates for years while waiting for developments which are now unlikely to materialise either short or medium-term.

“The economic crisis has fundamentally affected the construction and development sector in our town,” admitted the local mayor Antoni Joan Bertomeu.

Teulada officials will now check all plots against the town’s urban development plan (PGOU) to determine which plots of reclassified land have been developed and which remain in their original rustic state.

The town hall will then approach the Alicante Catastro, which registers the province’s rateable values, and ask for these to be revised.