Spain's TV channels asked to pay €5m to RTVE

Iñaki Ferreras | 21-03-2011

Spain's TV companies will have to pay RTVE a total of €4.9 million as an additional tax in order to compensate the national public broadcaster for its lack of advertising since January 2010.

The Spanish Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) calculated the total of income to be given to RTVE by telecommunication operators and the private channels is €258.5 million.



The financing law obliges in-the-clear TV channels to RTVE finance with 3% of their incomes while the obligation for the pay-TV channels is 1.5% of their incomes and 0.9% in the case of the so-called telco tax.

The TV channels are obliged to backdate this tax from the end of 2009 while for the telcos they must account for it from 2010.

RTVE has also been allocated a total of €20.13 million corresponding to their incomes for the last months of 2009. However on taking account of these incomes in some cases the CMT detected differences between the incomes before taxes declared by the telcos and what they finally paid.