La autonomía tributaria local en Argentina y Españapropuestas para su defensa

Abstract

The institution of a municipality of a town or city is central to the structure of any State, its proximity to the citizen makes it a natural channel of participation and it is responsible for a countless number of direct basic needs as the first bastion against social demands. Its sociological value has become a constitutional recognition of existence carefully protected by the particular status that gives its natural or pre-existing origin to any territorial order in legal terms. This research recognizes a chaotic and structural scene in financial terms and resource allocation of the municipalities of Argentina and Spain, taking as a starting point the effective development of guaranteed autonomy and its position regarding the shortcomings or inconsistencies of fiscal federalism. Our study begins with a conceptual delimitation of institutes that accompanied us throughout the research, first of all, autonomy. We have chosen to dismember the term in each of those essential assumptions of existence, within which, we have recognized the component of self-sufficiency, understood as financial self-determination. Next, we have moved towards the delimitation and conceptualization of tax power, an aspect that we consider central to the deployment of autonomous powers. Next, we have analyzed the territorial distribution in Argentina and Spain, paying special attention to the level of the local government, observing from the forms of state adopted, a recognition of the strong decentralizing process from which levels of government especially endowed with constitutionally guaranteed autonomy derive. In this framework, the allocation of resources is an element of special consideration, understood from the different existing distribution systems of tax power. After this introductory analysis, we go deeply into the hard core of the research, we have tried to offer a finished answer to the question of whether municipal autonomy exists in Argentina and Spain from the perspective of tax law, and on its merit, whether there are practical mechanisms to defend municipal autonomy in those States where the autonomy is overwhelmed, an unavoidable presupposition of recognition and protection. Next, we have analyzed how the restrictions or inconsistencies of fiscal federalism affect municipal autonomy with repercussions on the current state of municipal defunding and its low participation in making important decisions in terms of financing. It is correct to point out that the need for resources results in a political dependence on subnational governments with the consequent acceptance of interferences outside the institutional autonomy, so that as long as the status quo is kept, the municipality will continue to be the forgotten level of government, preventing the development of large cities. The results obtained are based on the adaptation of a qualitative methodology of analysis of secondary sources, using the grammatical or literal method, and then resorting to a systematic interpretation and, at certain times, resorting to the historical and teleological method. Based on this, little municipal participation and intervention has been determined in the development of the fiscal federalism system in both Argentina and Spain, subsisting through transfers from higher levels of government, and moving away from an indigenous, own and efficient system of tax resources that adapt to each local reality and commune with the constitutionally guaranteed local autonomy that, recognized in its normative face, is in fact emptied of content. The reader will be able to appreciate in the course of the research how progress is made from a description of the complex phenomenon studied towards innovative proposals of legal policy. In this sense, we have sought, as the main objective of our study, to determine the viability of oblique or subrogation actions within the framework of Argentine-Spanish fiscal federalism in defense of municipal autonomy. We have focused on concrete and innovative mechanisms to legitimize municipal states to claim violations of the correct functioning of fiscal federalism and local autonomy, in an active or omissive way. Our study has therefore been aimed at providing a new and legal valid perspective not produced until now, based on the creation of authentic procedural actions with the possibility of implementation - both in judicial and administrative settings - aimed at the protection of the local autonomy. In an observed scene of nonexistence or inconsistencies of defensive means achievable by municipalities, the actions we propose make it possible to overcome procedural problems.