The Board of Arbitration is in charge of resolving all disputes arising between the different administrations over the application of the Economic Agreement, either in competence issues or in the application of the Economic Agreement provisions to specific cases concerning individual tax relations.
The Board of Arbitration is made up of three members appointed among experts of renown prestige with over fifteen years of professional experience in tax and finance matters and their appointment is formalised by the Minister of Finance and the Basque Counsellor of Treasury and Finance for a period of six years.
The Joint Committee shall adopt its agreements or Resolutions in accordance with the general principles of Administrative law, with the speciality that they can only be subject to appeals raised through the Contentious-Administrative judicial review to the Supreme Court.
The functions assigned to the Board of Arbitrators are as follows:
- Resolve all disputes qarising between the Administration of the State and the Territorial Governments of the Historical Territories, or between the latter and the Administration of any other Autonomous Community, over the application of the points of connection for the taxes transferred hereunder and over the determination of the proportion corresponding to each Administration in cases of joint filing of Corporation Tax or Value Added Tax returns.
- Hear disputes arising between the interested Administrations over the interpretation and application of the present Economic Agreement in specific cases concerning individual tax relations.
- Resolve any disputes that may arise over the domicile of taxpayers.
The Agreement also provides for certain special procedures to be brought before the Arbitration Board, which are intended to simplify the handling of disputes: the abbreviated procedure, the extension of effects and the enforcement incident.
Finally, it is to be pointed out that that the referral of conflicts to the Board of Arbitration implies the suspension of administrative proceedings q in progress until the conflicts are resolved and that the procedures for the Board of Arbitration is laid down by virtue of its specific regulatory provision Real Decreto 1760/2007, de 28 de diciembre. The latest of the amendment of the Economic Agreement has introduced, in addition to what is envisaged in its regulations, three new procedures: summary procedure, extension of effects and interlocutory application for enforcement.
