The Governing Board of the Madrid City Council approved this Thursday a new rate that will affect all properties in the capital from 2025. It will mean the return of payment for waste collection after ten years in which this service had been assumed. within the Real Estate Tax (IBI), the other tax paid by all residents with their own home in the capital.
The Almeida Government has approved it within the Fiscal Ordinances for next year and affirms that it is “unfair” and that it makes it “obligatory” because a state law obliges municipalities to include a tax rate starting in April. garbage to pay for the collection of urban waste, in transposition of a European directive. In total, the Madrid council has to raise 256 million euros.
The average cost of the fee will be 140 euros per year, although there will be differences by neighborhood, since those that generate the most waste and also the homes with the highest cadastral value will pay more. The City Council emphasizes that it will be the owners of the homes who receive the receipt, but in the cases of rented apartments, “the owner may pass on the garbage rate to the tenant,” the mayor indicated. Then the Treasury delegate, Engracia Hidalgo, stressed that it will depend “on what is put in the contracts.”
In this regard, Almeida has also added that “the best way to limit rents in Madrid is not to impose this waste collection fee, because it will mean an increase in rents.” The first mayor has also explained that the council is not going to charge street cleaning to this tax, since this could double the cost of the bill.
The garbage tax for individuals disappeared in Madrid in 2015. A year before, Ana Botella (PP) had announced its elimination as part of her campaign to be re-elected mayor. Although his party ruled out his candidacy, the garbage tax disappeared and the City Council began to pay for waste collection with the income obtained by the IBI. Currently the council has signed contracts for the removal of waste worth more than 3.5 billion euros, 70% more than previous tenders.
How the new rate was calculated
The criterion for calculating the rate has been constructed by adding a basic rate, which all properties will pay for the availability of the waste collection and treatment service, and a rate per generation. The first part (which weighs 81%) takes into account the cadastral value of the home and for the second, generation (the remaining 19%), it takes into account the amount of waste generated and the percentage of quality of waste separation. each of the 131 neighborhoods of the city, provided by the Valdemingómez Technology Park.
The number of properties that will pay the rate is around 1.7 million, with garages and storage rooms associated with a home being exempt from payment, because they do not generate waste, nor are plots of land and buildings in a state of ruin. Empty homes and premises where no activity is carried out will only pay the part corresponding to the basic rate for availability of the service, but must prove annually that they remain in this situation.
In the case of homes, the average bill that will have to be paid is 141 euros, while properties for commercial use will have an average fee of 310 euros. The first receipt will reach each taxpayer in the first months of 2025, in the form of a notification of registration of the fee with its corresponding settlement, with a period of two months for payment from receipt. In subsequent years, this individualized notification will not be necessary as it is managed through the registration system, just as it is done with the IBI.
The Madrid City Council has included in the new rate a reduction in the fee for large families similar to the one that exists in the IBI, which will take into account the cadastral value of the home and the category of the large family title. The reduction will be applied ex officio in those cases in which the taxpayer is the owner of the home. In the event that the large family is the tenant of the home, it must be requested before March 1 of the year in which it is intended to take effect and will remain in force until the status of large family is lost or the conditions are modified. circumstances that justified its granting.
IBI reduction in 2025
The announcement of the new rate has been accompanied by a reduction in the IBI for next year, in line with the tax reductions during his years in government. It is currently at 0.442% and in 2025 it will decrease to 0.428%, very close to the legal minimum of 0.4% and only above two large cities (Zaragoza and Santander).
Almeida assures that if it were not for the measures adopted in these years “to follow the rates that were applied in 2019 when the PP arrived at the City Council, Madrid residents would not only pay 256 million sablazo next year but would also have paid 220 million additional euros in taxes. The IBI was at 0.51% when Almeida arrived in Cibeles and the council estimates that 86% of the increase in the rate will have been compensated by these tax reductions.
“All city councils are going to have to face lawsuits over the configuration of the norm”
The Madrid mayor has predicted that the new tax law “imposed” by Pedro Sánchez will generate high “litigation.” “All city councils are going to have to face lawsuits over the configuration of the rule,” said the councilor in the press conference after the Government Meeting, in which he pointed out that the Madrid City Council continues “making a effort” to compensate for that expense: “We continue to lower the IBI because we firmly believe that it is the best for this city.”
Regarding possible challenges to the regulations of the central government, Almeida recalled that the councils do not have “the capacity to challenge it” since “it is a regulation with the status of law and we do not have the capacity to go to the Constitutional Court”, For all these reasons, Almeida has insisted that “there will be litigation regarding this rate and that all city councils are going to have to face lawsuits.”
Furthermore, he lamented that “if one takes the establishment of the rate in the waste law, one does not know what is truly being recorded. It is totally and absolutely insecure and insecure and throughout all these months in which we have addressed both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Ecological Transition, they have been unable to define more precisely what this rate is like and what they are. its essential elements.”
Maroto affirms that Ayuso is the “godmother of the tax”
The PSOE spokesperson in the Madrid City Council, Reyes Maroto, assured after the approval that “this garbage rate has a godmother and it is Mrs. Ayuso.” He said this in relation to the news reported by Somos Madrid that shows that the Community of Madrid asked to impose it in its current Waste Management Strategy, signed by the Minister of the Environment in 2018, now spokesperson for the popular group, Carlos Izquierdo.
Maroto has also asked the municipal government to incorporate bonuses for families and vulnerable people. And he has denounced that we Madrid residents are going to pay more than other municipalities as a result of the “poor management” that the City Council is doing with respect to waste collection.
As for Más Madrid, its spokesperson Rita Maestre has criticized the “disaster” in the capital’s garbage management and lamented that “once again it will be the neighborhoods in the south and east of the city that bear the weight of the entire treatment of the City’s waste”, who will be “those who will suffer the most from a rate that does not include any bonus for hosting the treatment plants, landfills or the Valdemingómez incinerator.”
The Más Madrid spokesperson believes that what was announced by the mayor is a “regressive” formula because “who is going to pay the rate are the tenants” and “the reductions that Almeida has announced for the IBI mean about 400 euros less in the bill for the residents.” residents of Núñez de Balboa and less than 20 euros for the residents of the Vallecas bridge.”
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