El Supremo acota el cálculo del valor del catastro sin la visita de un perito

The Supreme Court has ruled that communities cannot calculate the value of a property using maps like Google Maps without a specialist visit. The court's important decision favors taxpayers when it comes to the property value used by autonomous administrations to calculate, among other things, the Inheritance Tax and Acts Documented after the sale of a flat when there is no reference value.

The Supreme Court accepted an appeal against a 2024 ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice of Extremadura and annulled it, further limiting the exceptions for the Administration to not need to resort to a specialist's visit to appraise a property when there is no reference value in the land register or "when the taxpayer has contested said value", explains José María Salcedo, partner at Salcedo Tax Litigation & Legal Advising.

The case mentioned in the ruling concerns a taxpayer who acquired a house and a garage plot for 120,000 euros in 2018, justifying the price based on an architectural technician's report that included an interior and exterior visit to the property. Despite this, the Junta of Extremadura revised its tax liquidation and valued the transaction over 200,000 euros, resulting in a liquidation of about 7,500 euros including interest on delay.

In its valuation, the Junta did not send a specialist to visit the property, but provided documentary evidence such as floor plans, orthophotographs, and photos taken through Google Maps satellite view; something that prompted the taxpayer's appeal to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in favor of the taxpayer. The Supreme Court explains that the evidence provided only allowed a "stereotyped and generalized" valuation, and that such information does not allow obtaining a singularized valuation of the property, especially to know the interior condition.

The Supreme Court reinforces its doctrine and reminds that "the visit is the general rule because it allows to ensure an individualized and sufficiently motivated valuation, taking into account circumstances that cannot always be known through documentary sources, such as the conservation state, the quality of materials, interior distribution, structural deficiencies, or the need for renovations".

The Contention-Administration Chamber also points out that, "although exceptionally, the inspection can be dispensed with, the Administration must specifically, rationally, sufficiently, and objectively justify that such a visit is unnecessary, without the judicial body being able to subsequently make up for the deficiencies of the expert's opinion".

Regarding this, Salcedo explains that, in practice, administrations usually include a paragraph in the valuations made using documentary evidence such as Google Maps, where they argue that the personal inspection of a specialist has not been carried out due to the property not presenting "singular circumstances". After the ruling, the Supreme Court considers that "it is a matter of copying and pasting, so it states that it is not enough to include this paragraph, but there must be a genuine justification" to avoid these personal visits in the valuation of a property's price.

All this, in a context where most valuations are already made using the reference value that was endorsed by the Constitutional Court a few months ago, so "the percentage of value checks has dropped a lot and the Administration should have sufficient means to carry out these personal checks" with a specialist. "Before they had this excuse, but no longer," Salcedo values this newspaper.

In addition to the explicit implications that the Supreme Court's ruling points out, the tax attorney also reviews others that could arise following the publication of the decision. For example, what would happen if, after valuing a property using documentary evidence or the reference value, the taxpayer deems it appropriate to file an appeal contesting this value and force a personal visit by a specialist, which eventually determines that the price must be higher than initially established?

In these cases, Salcedo points out, "the prohibition on reforming in peius applies, which means the lower price prevails so that the appeal is not discouraging".