Estepona starts to apply the reduction in property tax bills in August

The Estepona City Council has begun applying a reduction in the Property Tax (IBI) for registered residents with the bill issued this August, a measure that was approved after achieving zero debt and which averages a 20% decrease for nearly 38,000 households, as reported by the Council this Friday.

Thus, the City Council highlighted in a statement that this reduction, according to data from the Municipal Audit Office, has been applied to a total of 37,988 bills of registered residents, calculating the savings for all households at 6.1 million euros.

With this measure, the IBI in the city “has seen an accumulated reduction of 50% since 2011 thanks to initiatives carried out over these years,” stated the local administration, emphasizing that “this policy of tax reductions contrasts with that followed by previous governments, which had applied the highest IBI increase in the city's history.”

According to Mayor José María García Urbano, the City Council is studying further tax reductions that will continue to benefit citizens. Additionally, the City Council has requested the Provincial Collection Board to extend the voluntary payment period for the IBI until September 30, aiming to facilitate this process for taxpayers.

Another fiscal measure being implemented by the Council is a 3% reduction in the garbage fee, aimed at citizens who make at least three contributions to the city's clean point. This involves waste for which there are no special containers distributed on public roads, such as electrical and computer equipment, furniture, oils, bulbs, x-rays, or clothing, among others.

The Council has emphasized that this reduction in the bill must be requested by the user to the Provincial Collection Board during the first quarter of 2026, by submitting an application, the previous year's garbage fee receipt, and providing proof of each delivery, which will be provided on each visit to the Clean Point.

Moreover, the City Council has reminded that it has been applying tax benefits on the garbage fee to residents who are in vulnerable situations, long-term unemployed, and retirees.

Zero Municipal Debt

On another note, the mayor has indicated that this tax reduction has been possible as soon as the debt of 304 million euros, inherited by the Council in 2011 from previous administrations, was paid off.

In this regard, he recalled that Estepona was among the most indebted municipalities in Spain, with a debt of 4,600 euros per inhabitant, while highlighting that when he arrived at the Council, the situation was of “bankruptcy.” Thus, he stressed that public employees had to bring their own “toilet paper,” gas stations “would not serve fuel to the municipal vehicle fleet,” or for a time the Local Police could not use patrol cars.

Furthermore, the mayor explained that “savings and responsibility in spending have been crucial in the economic management necessary for the amortization of this debt, with numerous measures that have contributed to the elimination of superfluous spending or the squandering of public resources.”

He also highlighted the importance of the elimination in 2011 of municipal companies, which had become “instruments to evade transparency, control, and the administrative law governing the operation of the local administration, being tools of uncontrolled spending by previous governments.” In this regard, he noted that, over these 14 years, “all economic and municipal management is audited and controlled with the guarantees of the Intervention, Treasury, and Secretariat bodies.”

Regarding the payment of the inherited debt, he highlighted that with the current municipal government team from the PP, all the unaccounted bills for 33 million euros have been eliminated; the entire inherited debt with the Andalusian Regional Government for the misuse or unjustified use of grants granted to the previous socialist government (6 million euros), as well as the debt with the Social Security Treasury of 60 million and with the Tax Agency, which reached 18 million, in addition to more than 90 million from the supplier payment plan that had to be initiated, among other concepts.