Fifty of the 78 municipalities in Asturias raised in 2016 the property tax income of urban nature (housing, premises, industrial units...), the main income that supports local corporations. This result suggests that the tendency to increase the pressure of the property tax, observed especially since 2010 and resulting from the policies to rescue the finances of the municipalities, was extended last year. But this trend is no longer as widespread or intense as in previous years. The invoice of the main tribute on real estate property has been decreased in Oviedo, Gijón, Llanes and Navia, among other councils. On the other hand, it has registered again rises in Avilés and, especially, in Mieres, according to data of the General Direction of the Cadastre.

The urban property tax represents 25% of almost one billion euros that the municipalities of Asturias collect through all their means of financing. At the hardest moment of the Great Recession, and once the crisis no longer allowed for other sources of income (urban licenses, among them), the central government and the municipalities promoted reforms and decisions that increased the pressure of the property tax: surcharge and express mechanisms of cadastral update were established, and they also promoted a procedure of regularization that only in Asturias has now uncovered the existence of more than 30,000 properties or parts of them over which no tax had been applied.

The impact of these and other measures (ordinary cadastral revisions or local increases in tax rates) led to an increase in property tax income since 2010 of over 20% in almost all major councils in Asturias. Mieres is one of the most extreme cases: in the fiscal year 2010 the council collected 4.59 million euros by means of this tax, and in 2016 it reached 6.85 million euros, almost 50% more. In the last year Mieres was, among the most populated municipalities, the one that registered the most intense rise of tax income (6.2%). Avilés, where tax income also increased in 2016, increased 1.89% (exceeding for the first time 16 million euros).

In other municipalities in Asturias, the property tax increase has not been so sharp lately. In Gijón the tax has been decreasing from 2014, when the municipal corporation presided by Carmen Moriyón (Foro) agreed to reduce the tax. Income tax went from almost 67 million euros in 2014 to 61.80 in 2015 and by 2016 it almost stabilized (61.97 million euros). In the case of Oviedo, the data of the cadastre show the effects of the reduction agreed by the tripartite local government (PSOE-Somos-IU): the tax income fell 1.9%, from 73.45 million euros to 72.04. Both municipalities, as well as Avilés, are affected this year by the process of cadastral regularization.