The Second Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Spain´s Supreme Court has unanimously agreed to annul the payment of €10,320,853 imposed in 2016 by the Central Economic Administrative Court on Corporación Alimentaria Peñasanta (CAPSA) for corporate income tax for 2007, 2008 and 2009, as specified in a ruling dated 26 April 2022.
In the ruling, the Supreme Court, which recognises a change of criteria, corrects the previous decision of the National High Court, which had confirmed the assessment imposed by the Treasury against the food company: “In order to carry out an adequate interpretation of the purpose of the regulation, we cannot look exclusively at the material cost of the advertising, but rather at the expenditure that the Administration has not paid for advertising,” the magistrates emphasise, recalling that the regulation seeks to encourage private initiative: “It is not, therefore, the material price of the support, but the value of the advertising of the event of general interest and its informative transcendence. Therefore, it is clear that the tax deduction cannot be based on the aforementioned cost of the logo insertion but, on the contrary, on the cost of the integral advertising action as a whole,” the ruling completes.
This new interpretation of the Supreme Court establishes that the Audiencia Nacional, in maintaining the €10.3 million settlement against CAPSA, had made a “restrictive interpretation of the tax benefit”, as it reduced it “to insignificant amounts and therefore lacking in logic”.
CAPSA was successfully represented by Gijón-based RSB Tax & Legal, with founding partner Enrique Roces Salazar.
