L'Autoritat Catalana de la Competència (ACCO), an independent body of the Generalitat, has filed a contentious administrative appeal before the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) against the tax ordinance of the Barcelona City Council that imposes a fee for the use of space public to postal operators that deliver products purchased through electronic commerce to consumers at home, better known as the Amazon rate.
This tax was approved by the plenary session of Barcelona City Council on February 24. The ACCO considers that this rate represents an obstacle to the maintenance of effective competition and restricts the freedoms of establishment and provision of services recognized by the EU, since it considers that it “unjustifiably discriminates between competitors.”
The ACCO argues that the municipal tax only applies to postal operators but that, on the other hand, other transport companies or businesses that have their own delivery fleet are exempt from it. According to the body that has filed the appeal, all these activities generate an environmental impact and impact on city traffic equivalent to that of postal operators, but only they pay the fee, so they lose competitiveness.
The appeal also recalls that the rate only taxes electronic commerce deliveries, but not those from physical commerce or other channels such as telephone or mail sales.
The ACCO insists that all forms of distribution have the same negative effects regardless of the sales channel, so it does not make sense for the rate to only apply to online commerce.
Likewise, ACCO argues, the municipal ordinance aims to compensate for “an alleged tax imbalance” between online and offline merchants, and understands that the rate is “inadequate to achieve this objective, since those who end up paying it are the postal operators, "They are nothing more than delivery service providers for both types of commerce."
The ACCA understands that Barcelona City Council has not taken into account that postal operators could pass the rate on to their clients, among whom there are also small businesses that have a sales channel or line open and that depend on postal operators for the delivery of products sold to your customers
