The challenge
The Mancomunitat La Plana runs the collection service across municipalities with different fiscal, territorial and operational realities. The challenge was building new fees able to respond to that diversity without losing a shared methodology.
The project had to make it possible to:
- Determine the service’s real or projected cost in each municipality.
- Correct the coverage shortfalls of existing fees.
- Adapt taxation to the structure of households and economic activities.
- Bring in behaviour-based payment criteria wherever the collection model and the data allowed it.
- Link the charge to participation and service use without compromising economic balance.
- Build fiscal structures that are manageable and transferable into municipal ordinances.
- Keep shared methodological criteria, while avoiding applying the same solution to different municipalities.
The challenge wasn’t standardising the fees. It was applying the same economic and fiscal rigour to build a response specific to each reality.
Project development
The project starts from an individual diagnosis of each municipality, before building its new fiscal structure.
The work covered:
- Analysis of waste generation and source separation.
- Characterisation of the collection model and the identification systems available.
- Analysis of seasonality, second homes and household structure.
- Determining collection, transport, treatment and overhead costs.
- Identifying the revenue and returns tied to the service.
- Calculating the economic balance and the coverage ratio of the current fee.
- Analysis of the register, tax categories, and household and commercial charges.
- Studying participation data where available.
- Defining the new charge structure.
- Building uptake hypotheses and revenue scenarios.
- Selecting the most robust fiscal scenario.
- Supporting the drafting of the specific articles in the fiscal ordinances.
The model adapts to each municipality’s real capacity to apply behaviour-based payment criteria, both from the service side and from the data available.
Methodology
The methodology was structured in five steps:
1. Economic and fiscal diagnosis
Determining costs, revenue, the register, the tax structure, and the current coverage ratio.
2. Characterising the tax base
Analysis of households, floor area, economic activities, collection models, and the information available per taxpayer.
3. Defining the fiscal structure
Building household and commercial charges and defining the criteria that can factor into the calculation.
4. Modelling behaviour and revenue
Defining bands, participation hypotheses and different scenarios to test the model’s economic sensitivity.
5. Validation and regulatory transfer
Selecting the scenario that offers the best balance of coverage, fairness, incentive and administrative viability, and incorporating it into the fiscal ordinance.
A shared methodology aimed at combining financial sufficiency, tax fairness, behaviour, calculation robustness, and real management capacity.
Results
- Individual determination of the real or projected service cost for each municipality.
- Identifying coverage shortfalls and the real financing needs of the new fees.
- Full review of existing fiscal structures, both household and commercial.
- Defining new tax structures adapted to each municipality’s register, territory and collection model.
- Bringing in behaviour-based payment wherever user identification and participation data allow a robust application.
- Defining participation bands and variables that let the charge be adjusted without compromising revenue stability.
- Adapting commercial taxation to the characteristics and generation potential of economic activities.
- Building uptake hypotheses and revenue scenarios to anticipate the economic effect of each proposal.
- Validating the projected economic balance before rolling out the new fees.
- Integrating service data, the tax register and the fiscal structure.
- Defining a model ready to evolve as identification and data availability improve.
- Transferring the technical-economic models into the fiscal ordinances, making them easier to apply administratively.
Conclusions
The project shows that moving towards a fair fee isn’t simply about adding a variable part.
You need to know what cost has to be recovered, who contributes to the system, which differences between taxpayers make fiscal sense, which data is robust enough to adjust the charge, what behaviour you want to incentivise, and how revenue will respond when that behaviour changes.
That’s why the same methodology can lead to different fiscal structures. In some municipalities, the data allows a move towards behaviour-based payment; in others, the priority is first securing a balanced fiscal structure that’s ready to evolve.
A fair fee isn’t one that treats everyone the same. It’s one that applies objective criteria to different realities without losing the service’s economic balance.
Lessons learned
- A shared methodology doesn’t mean a single fee.
Criteria can be shared, but the structure has to respond to each municipality’s reality. - Understand the shortfall first, then design the charge.
Cost coverage is the foundation any incentive system is built on. - Behaviour-based payment depends on data quality.
Without reliable identification, it’s not possible to turn participation into a robust fiscal criterion. - Not every municipality needs to move at the same pace.
The fiscal system has to adapt to how mature the collection model and data infrastructure are. - Simulation is essential.
Scenarios make it possible to anticipate how changes in behaviour will affect revenue and the service’s balance. - Territorial reality is fiscal too.
Second homes, scattered housing, dwelling size or the nature of local activities can all change what the fairest way to distribute cost looks like. - The fee can evolve with the service.
A good fiscal structure doesn’t just solve this year’s problem — it lays the groundwork for bringing in more information and more differentiation in the future..