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SUMA Website and General Problems Accessing and Paying IBI and Plusvalia -Unfair Surchages Also Being Billed
Helpful member
I must admit the Suma website/system seems to be full of software issues and I'm struggling to find any confidence in the accuracy of their bills.
I've experienced many problems trying to access bills and pay them before deadlines but it seems almost impossible for 'Suma Online Help' to provide clear answers, probably because of the language barriers. I have raised online queries but the replies seem to be 'google' English -Spanish translations and they don't answer specific questions . They cannot deal with any disputes about possible errors on their bills and are just a 'Tax Collection' agency branch.
Here are examples of questions/actions I have raised to them:
1. Can you advise the date my 'Property Tax' bills were loaded on your system for me to access them? No answer
Reason for question: Could not access the bills using previous tax reference numbers or numero fijo references (the one for 'waste' bill worked but not the one for IBI). We searched for IBI bill from July - October'22 and could not find it . We contacted Suma again on the 23rd November'22 and they said they hadn't received the documentation for the property tax yet. Then we chased them again in Jan'23 and they claimed demands for overdue payment were already emailed to us.
2. What date did you send the email and what was the email address? No answer
Reason for question: We are not set up for automatic email notifications so they must have sent our confidential data to someone else.
3. Can you confirm that you posted the demands for payment to our Spanish property address? Reply given was they cannot confirm because of the huge number that are posted every day.
Reason for question: We are not on automatic email notification system, therefore they are supposed to send their demands by postal service. We have not received any letters from them because they have inadvertently set us up on automatic email notification but sending to someone else's email address. If we don't have the demand letters , then we cannot see the tax reference and therefore cannot go online and pay the bill (ie. we are based in the UK).
4. Please send us copy of the demands to our correct email address. They sent us the copies of the demands for payment.
5. The IBI and something called Plusvalia (a backdated bill for donation of property made back in Nov'21) appeared on the demand statement with 10% surcharges added for non-payment. Note what they said in point 1, where they informed us on the 23rd November'22 that the Property tax documentation hadn't been received yet, so how can they have the audacity to add surcharges on both IBI and Plusvalia bills? This was another reason for my point 1 question.
The tax reference also appeared on the top right hand side of these demands and we were advised to use it when trying to pay the 'overdue' total amount online via Suma website.
We then entered the tax reference and NIE on the Suma website screen and finally saw the total amount due with the option to pay it.
But I think the whole process may have changed now. Previously , we could re-use the same 'tax reference' and 'numero fjo' numbers every year to retrieve copy bills and pay online .
I have suspicions that their internal processes have been altered and that tax reference and numero fijo references can change depending on 'deadline dates'. So every time you use a tax reference after a deadline date it will prompt you with a pop-up message to answer Yes or No to see your bill (which may be recalculated with added surcharges if you haven't paid in time). When you choose 'Yes' , it creates a recalculated amount due with a brand new tax reference for you to use within a 'Deadline Date'. Therefore , take note of this new tax reference the next time you want to access the same screen again within the deadline date.
We are tempted to dispute the surcharges added to our bills (over 60 euros now) but you can see that explaining this whole fiasco above to their Head Office (in writing) is going to be nightmare because of the language difficulties . I spent literally 10 hrs amalgamating all the communications back and forth with Suma and then drafting out a long letter to their Director Jose Antonio Belso Martinez .
Then before deciding to post, I thought this might be their reaction:
1. They won't bother reading it and just uphold the surcharges saying the invoices were uploaded on the Suma system (unknown to us!)
2. They will claim we never contacted them after the 23rd November'22 to find out they were uploaded and what tax references and numero fijo numbers needed using to access and pay the bills before a deadline date. Although the IBI invoice shows a 'Final de Voluntaria' deadline date of 10th Oct 22 and 'Providenica de Apremio' date of 31/10/22 (look at Point 1 again above). The Plusvalia dates look very strange even though the donation was done in November 21 . Almost as if they manually created this bill because they show 'Final de Voluntaria' date 5/12/22 and 'Providenica de Apremio' 7/12/22.
3. You didn't request copies of the invoices during the voluntary billing and paying period.
4. They might claim that demand letters were posted to our Spanish property (how can we disprove that claim?).
It is an utterly unfair and despicable process where we have virtually no remit to dispute surcharges on invoices that we couldn't see and pay on their system. We just have to pay it!
