Título II. De la administracion, fiscalizacion, liquidacion y pago, sanciones y procedimientos

The General Directorate of Cadastre and Appraisal of Immovable Property, as an entity included within the specific administration of the Ministry, shall be headed by a Director General and such Deputy Directors as may be necessary.

It is incumbent upon the Directorate, in addition to what is established in this law, to authorize, sanction, and cancel the licenses of appraisers authorized by the Directorate.

The Director General may delegate functions to the Deputy Directors or to other public officials of the Directorate, and to the municipalities of the country, when necessary for the better administration of the tax or to change the value of the immovable property by means of an appraisal, which must be approved by the Municipal Council.

The General Directorate of Cadastre and Appraisal of Immovable Property is responsible for the registration, control and oversight of the tax.

The collection of the tax and fines shall be carried out by the Ministry of Public Finance, in accordance with Article 21 of this law.

When the municipalities of the country have the administrative capacity to absorb the collection of the tax, the Ministry of Public Finance shall expressly transfer such authority to them.

The Directorate shall prepare and keep up to date the cadastre and tax register of the immovable property throughout the territory of the Republic, under the real folio system, and shall establish valuation systems, determining the fair value of such property for tax purposes, in accordance with the duly updated appraisal manual.

For the purpose of determining valuation parameters for the appraised value (just price) of immovable property, the Directorate shall prepare the respective technical manual, and shall update it at least every five (5) years. The manual and its updates shall be authorized by Ministerial Agreement, which shall be published in the Official Gazette.

The municipalities, the dependencies of the State, as well as their decentralized and autonomous entities, are obligated to provide the collaboration that the entity administering the tax requests of them regarding the value of the constructions, additions and improvements that are made on the real property located within their jurisdiction.

The head of each of the Property Registries must send to the administering entity, within the first ten working days of each month, a list of properties registered for the first time during the preceding month, for purposes of internal fiscal control.

The real folio shall be understood as the registration made on the basis of the legal characteristics of each real property that a person owns throughout the national territory. This real folio shall constitute the tax registry record (fiscal matrícula) that must be opened for each taxpayer on the basis of the pertinent documents, whether by means of books, by computerized systems, or by any other similar means, provided that the latter are auditable.

The assessment of the tax shall be made by the administering entity on the basis of the register of the tax roll (matrícula fiscal) that it keeps for that purpose. Said register must be periodically verified by the Ministry of Public Finance, so that the appraisals and modifications that are to be entered in accordance with this law are correctly recorded.

The Directorate or the municipalities, as the case may be, shall issue the payment requirements for the tax, which may be divided into four (4) equal quarterly installments, which the taxpayer shall pay at the collection offices of the Ministry, the Departmental Administrations of Internal Revenue, the Fiscal Receiving Offices, the Municipal Treasuries, the Bank of Guatemala, or the Banks of the System.

The quarterly payments shall be remitted as follows:

First installment: In the month of April;

Second installment: In the month of July;

Third installment: In the month of October; and

Fourth installment: In the month of January.

Taxpayers may pay one or more quarters in advance, up to a maximum of four (4) quarters; in this case, any modification to the value of the property registered in the registration record (matrícula) shall apply starting from the quarter following the last payment.

Any change in the registered value of a real property, or the registration of a new one, shall take effect as of the quarter following the date on which the modification occurred or the legal transaction was carried out.

Amounts paid in excess by reason of payment of this tax may be credited to advance quarterly payments or to other taxes, at the request of the taxpayer.

Taxpayers who have fallen into default and owe the tax to the treasury for more than four (4) quarters, and fines, may be granted facilities to pay in monthly installments, for a maximum of twelve (12) months. For this purpose, a payment agreement shall be entered into in which the amount of the tax plus the respective fine is acknowledged, forming a grand total, payable in equal installments within the aforementioned time limit; without prejudice to the payment of the tax that continues to accrue for subsequent quarters. For this purpose, the head of the collecting entity shall appear on its behalf.

A taxpayer who fails to pay the tax in the manner and within the time established by this law shall incur a fine equivalent to twenty percent (20%) of the amount that the taxpayer failed to pay.

Due to the special nature of this tax and of its administration, failure to pay the tax within the time limit provided for in this law shall not give rise to the payment of the compensatory interest provided for in Articles 58 and 59 of the Tax Code, nor shall the sanction for late payment established in Article 92 of said Code be applied.

The sanctions determined by the laws on the matter shall be applied, according to the seriousness of the case, to administrative employees who commit any of the following:

1.Notifiers who do not strictly observe the procedures that this law establishes for serving notices;

2.Appraisers or enumerators who do not carry out appraisals with due diligence;

3.Register operators who fail to process the appraisals or any other documents that entail a modification of the tax register within the time and in the manner established by this law; and,

4.Clerks who, without just cause, fail to comply with the procedure to which files for the rectification of the tax register or of the tax current account are subject.

Where a taxpayer's delinquency is caused by a delay in the operations of the tax register or of the tax current account, duly proven and attributable to the operators of the collecting entity, the employees entrusted with these functions shall be liable for that fact and shall be sanctioned in accordance with the provisions of this article.

Recidivism in the violations referred to in this article shall be grounds for dismissal of the responsible employee, in accordance with the provisions of the Civil Service Law. In all cases, the affected person shall be granted a prior hearing.

The following administrative sanctions are established:

1.Appraisers authorized to act before the administering entity who, in the exercise of their activity, perform acts or appraisals through which they violate the rules contained in the Appraisal Manual, and whose conduct results in fiscal harm, shall incur a fine equivalent to five per thousand (5%o) of the value of the real property. This fine shall not be less than one hundred quetzales (Q.100.00) nor more than one thousand quetzales (Q.1,000.00). For committing a second violation of the same kind, the fine shall be double the previous fine, together with temporary suspension of their authorization as appraisers for six (6) months. For a third violation of the same nature, their authorization as appraisers shall be permanently cancelled, without prejudice to certifying the relevant records to the competent tribunals. In all cases, the affected party shall be given a hearing.

2.Notaries who fail to submit the forms and notices required by Article 38 of the Notary Code shall incur a fine of ten quetzales (Q.10.00).

The limitation period for the rights and obligations arising from the application, collection and oversight of this tax shall be four (4) years.

In all types of decisions, orders, summonses and notices that it issues, the administering entity must state the legal grounds on which it bases its actions; the decisions and orders must be signed by the Director or Deputy Director of the office, or by the Municipal Mayor, as applicable.

In matters of official appraisals and challenges thereto, the following procedures shall be observed:

a.Once the appraisal has been approved, it and the decision approving it shall be notified to the taxpayer at the taxpayer's registered tax domicile, or at the domicile under which the taxpayer appears registered in any other tax register of the Ministry of Public Finance, observing for that purpose the notification procedures provided for in the Tax Code.

b.Within eight days following the notification of the appraisal and of the decision approving it, the taxpayer may challenge the proceedings by filing a written submission before the respective authority, observing the formalities required of every first petition under the Tax Code, clearly stating the factual and legal grounds on which the challenge is based, citing the legal provisions the taxpayer considers applicable to the case, proposing and attaching the evidence available to the taxpayer, and indicating, in addition, the evidence which, in the taxpayer's opinion, the administrative authority hearing the matter should gather on its own initiative.

c.If no challenge is filed within the period referred to in the preceding subparagraph, the appraisal and the decision that approved it shall be deemed accepted and final, and shall immediately thereafter, within a period of no more than ten days and for the purposes of the tax, be transferred to the taxpayer's tax registration record, or the appropriate record shall be opened.

d.If the taxpayer exercises the right to challenge, the matter must be decided within thirty days counted from the day following the expiry of the period for exercising the right to challenge, and within the same period the decision must be notified in the manner prescribed by law.

e.Against the decision, the taxpayer may file the application for revocation within the time and in the manner established by the Tax Code.

f.If the administrative route is exhausted, the taxpayer may resort to the corresponding judicial route.

g.Once the appraisal and the decision that approved it have become final, they shall immediately thereafter, within a time limit not exceeding ten days and for the purposes of payment of the tax, be transferred to the taxpayer's tax registration record, or the appropriate record shall be opened; however, if it has been challenged through the administrative and judicial routes, then for the purposes of payment of the tax and fines, the taxpayer shall be deemed registered in the tax registration record as of the date on which the appraisal should have become final had those procedures been used, with the values resulting from the original appraisal or from the modifications attributed to the property by virtue of the appeals.

Taxpayers may establish a special tax domicile for the purposes of this law, and must notify the administering entity.

Taxpayers subject to this law who leave the country and do not give notice of that fact to the administering entity, indicating the name of their legal representative appointed in the country or of the person in charge of their affairs, shall be notified at the registered tax domicile or at the place where the real property that is the subject of the appraisal or of the tax is located. If the notifier has knowledge that the person to be notified is abroad, the notifier shall refrain from carrying out the notification procedure.

When it is impossible to notify the interested person in accordance with the preceding articles at the registered tax domicile or at his or her habitual residence, notification may be made at the address where the property that is the subject of the appraisal or of the tax is located, or at his or her administrative or commercial offices; the notification shall be valid provided that the notifying officer records the circumstances that led to serving it at that address.

In the case of legal persons, notification may also be made at the address that appears for them in the Mercantile Registry.

The administering entity must prepare a pro forma assessment of the overdue tax and notify the taxpayer of the payment demand. Within twenty (20) working days following the date of notification of the demand, the taxpayer shall have the right to contest the collection being made against them, for which the taxpayer must prove the circumstances extinguishing the payment obligations.

Once the period indicated in the preceding paragraph has expired without the taxpayer having responded to the collection, a decision shall be issued confirming the assessment; the certification of the decision shall constitute sufficient enforceable instrument, which shall be forwarded for economic-coercive collection.

Where opposition to the assessment has been expressed and the evidence is submitted, the administering entity shall examine and decide the pertinent matters of the case raised, within thirty (30) working days following the opposition, issuing for that purpose the final decision resolving the dispute. If such decision determines that the debt subsists in whole or in part, once it becomes final, the procedure established in the preceding paragraph shall be followed. The taxpayer's right to file the Application for Revocation is reserved.