Naviera Armas appeal dismissed
The Contencioso-Administrativo division of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC), First Chamber, has issued a judgment dismissing the ordinary appeal 441/2024 filed by Naviera Armas, S.A. against a decision by the Regional Economic-Administrative Tribunal of the Canary Islands dated 30 August 2024. With this ruling, the court fully upholds the tax assessment issued on 10 May 2023 by the Las Palmas Port Authority for the Occupancy Fee for Concession 15-C-871 for the period 1 to 31 May 2023, amounting to an exact total of €45,457.76.
Dispute over the applicable discount percentage
The dispute stemmed from the bonification percentage applicable to the tax charge under the demanial concession. Naviera Armas sought the nullification or annulment of the collection, arguing for an overall 75% discount, the maximum cap set out in Article 181 of the Recast Text of the State Ports and the Merchant Navy Act. The company maintained that a technical report dated 7 June 2018 recognized its right to receive a bonification for works to consolidate and improve land. However, the shipping firm argued that the Administration made a serious error when applying the legal mathematical formula by reducing the bonification to 0.27%; it said the numerator multiplied by 100 instead of 10,000, and that the annual tax rate T was calculated as 5.5 rather than 0.055.
Company argument and the State’s response
According to the firm, the formula correctly applied would yield 276.50%, which would require applying the legal bonification ceiling of 75%. In contrast, the State Attorney’s Office defended the validity of the collection, arguing that the Port Authority simply carried out the concession title established in a 2021 judgment. In that decision—issued following a lesividad procedure initiated by the Ministry of Finance after the concession was expanded on 22 December 2017—the court ruled that the overall bonification percentage in the charge for land area should be 27.7%, not the previous 36.7%.
How the 27.7% figure was calculated
This 27.7% figure results from adding the bonification for mooring and docking works set at 27.4% plus the deduction for land improvement quantified at 0.3% or 0.27%. The breakdown included in the concession title covers a total land area of 72,038.19 square meters, distributed between 66,643.73 square meters for passenger and cargo terminals and 5,394.46 square meters for the East Ramp, West Ramp and rampal. Within the terminal area, there are 39,391.21 square meters for the Terminal Explanada La Esfinge and 32,646.98 square meters assigned to adjacent operations areas and expansion.
For its part, the water sheet comprises 25,913.40 square meters in total: 21,600 square meters of floating surface for vessel docking—split equally into 10,800 square meters for the East side and another 10,800 square meters for the West side—and 4,313.40 square meters of pontoons, divided into 2,156.70 square meters for each side. It is in the latter area where the maximum 75% bonification for the water applies.
Ruling: res judicata and no reopening of the calculations
In its judgment, the court rejects the shipping company’s arguments and rules that the 27.7% bonification percentage applicable to land area has already been definitively settled and consolidated following the 2021 judgment and the subsequent amendment to the title carried out by the port’s board of directors on 20 December 2021. The Chamber concludes that there is material res judicata and that it is not appropriate to reopen the debate on the calculation parameters by recomputing the formula through the indirect challenge of periodic assessments.
The article Desestimado un recurso de Naviera Armas por la tasa de ocupación en el puerto de Las Palmas was first published on canarymaritime.com.
