The Madrid public television acknowledges in court that it does not have the capacity to meet the VAT debt claimed by the Tax Agency. The National Court has provisionally suspended one of the settlements.
According to elconstitucional.es, Radio Televisión Madrid admits in court that it cannot pay the more than 60 million euros demanded by Hacienda for value-added tax (VAT). The entity considers this amount unmanageable and has managed to have the National Court provisionally suspend one of the settlements.
The accumulated claim amounts to 60,029,924.56 euros for the years 2012 to 2022. Each case is appealed separately. In the current procedure, the National Court has halted a settlement of just over one million euros while it resolves the appeal, considering the impact of demanding payment and the risk of irreparable harm to the entity.
To justify its request, the channel presented its accounts and claimed that it is facing several similar procedures. According to its own words:
“an unmanageable amount for the appellant”
The company added that in no case would it have surplus cash to address that volume of debt.
The National Court had already confirmed a claim of 17 million euros corresponding to 2012, 2013 and 2014, considering that the public television had miscalculated the deductible VAT.
This information is significant in light of the regional budgets. The accounting law of the Community of Madrid sets 98,824,000 euros for Radio Televisión Madrid in 2026, and the accumulated claims amount to 60.7% of that annual figure. These figures span several years discussed in different procedures.
The acknowledgment comes shortly after the channel presented, on March 18, the closure of 2025 with a positive accounting result of 59,576 euros and a budget surplus of 846,585 euros. In that communication, the entity received 81.5 million from the Community.
The dispute also affects other regional televisions, with claims collectively nearing 400 million euros. Hacienda distinguishes between public service and commercial activity, such as advertising or content sales, and only allows VAT deductions for purchases used in activities that generate that right.
Part of the litigation is pending before the Court of Justice of the European Union, to which the National Court has referred questions about a case involving Aragón Televisión. The central government is also preparing a reform so that certain non-deductible taxes of RTVE are accounted as public service costs, a modification that does not itself resolve Telemadrid's claims.
José Antonio Sánchez, director of the channel since the appointment of June 2024, had already led Telemadrid between 2011 and 2014, the period that includes the three years for which the National Court confirmed the payment of 17 million.
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