Communicated on 29 March 2016
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 1375/14
Zvonko NOGOLICA
against Croatia
lodged on 18 December 2013
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Zvonko Nogolica, is a Croatian national, who was born in 1962 and lives in Zagreb. He is represented before the Court by Ms Lj. Nogolica, a lawyer practising in Zagreb.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
On 12 June 2002 the applicant bought a plot of land in Resnik.
On 13 November 2002 he submitted a property transfer tax declaration to the Zagreb Office of the Ministry of Finance Tax Authority (Ministarstvo financija, Porezna uprava, Područni ured Zagreb, hereafter “the Zagreb Office”).
On 27 April 2007 the Zagreb Office ordered the applicant to pay 39,096 Croatian kunas (HRK) in taxes (approximately EUR 5,300).
On 8 June 2007 the applicant lodged an appeal against the first-instance decision with the Ministry of Finance, challenging the findings of the Zagreb Office.
On 28 April 2010 the Ministry dismissed the applicant’s appeal as ill-founded and upheld the Zagreb Office’s tax assessment. It advised the applicant that the decision could not be challenged on appeal, but that he could lodge an administrative action with the Administrative Court (Upravni sud Republike Hrvatske).
The second-instance decision was served on the applicant on 27 May 2010.
On 28 June 2010 the applicant lodged an administrative action with the Administrative Court, arguing that the final decision on his tax liability, adopted by the Ministry on 28 April 2010, was unlawful, given that it had been adopted after the expiry of the statutory time-limit for establishing his tax liability. In particular, the applicant relied on section 94(3) of the General Tax Act (Opći porezni zakon), according to which the statutory time-limit started running from the end of the year in which the tax liability should have been established. The applicant stressed that, as he had submitted his tax declaration in November 2002, it followed that the time-limit had started running on 1 January 2003, and as the maximum time-limit for adopting a final decision on tax liability was six years under section 96 of the General Tax Act, it followed that the statutory period had expired on 1 January 2009.
On 6 March 2013 the High Administrative Court, which meanwhile became competent to examine the case, dismissed the applicant’s administrative action. It declined to deal with his complaint regarding the tax liability decision, on the grounds that he had failed to raise that issue in his appeal against the first-instance decision of the Zagreb Office.
On 3 May 2013 the applicant lodged a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske), which on 6 June 2013 declared the complaint inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded.
The decision of the Constitutional Court was served on the applicant’s representative on 18 June 2013.
COMPLAINT
The applicant complains that the domestic authorities established his tax liability contrary to the relevant domestic law, and that no effective procedure to challenge that decision was available to him.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. With regard to the decision establishing his tax liability, has there been a violation of the applicant’s right to peaceful enjoyment of his possessions, contrary to Article 1 of Protocol No. 1?
2. Did the applicant have at his disposal an effective domestic remedy for his complaints, as required by Article 13 of the Convention?
The Government are required to submit copies of all relevant documents concerning the applicant’s case.
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