2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE THIRTEEN - Taxation and Finance (§§ 1 — 33423) › Subtitle 17 - Internal Revenue Code of 2011 (§§ 30001 — 33423) › PART VII - Administrative Provisions, Procedures, Interests, Penalties, and Additions to Taxes (§§ 33001 — 33423) › Chapter 1066 - Procedures for Demand for Payment, Attachment, and Sale of Taxpayer’s Property (§§ 33261 — 33280) › § 33278 - Purchase of real or personal property by the Government

(a) Any real or personal property offered at a public auction to pay assessed debts, fines, interest, surcharges, penalties, and costs owed and not paid, which is not sold for lack of a bid that suffices to cover all such debts that encumber such property, may be bought by the agent on behalf of the Government of Puerto Rico at any public auction.
(b) The agent shall make a public bid for the property referred to above for the amount of such taxes, levies, fines, interest, surcharges, penalties, and costs, and if no better bid is made, he/she shall draw and cause the recording at the Property Registry of the corresponding district, a purchase certificate in favor of the Government of Puerto Rico, which shall contain an account and a description of the property as established in § 33273 of this title.
(c) If the redemption right granted in § 33274 of this title is not exercised within the term established therefor, such certificate, after being recorded at the property registry of the district in which such property is located, shall constitute freehold over said property in favor of the Government of Puerto Rico, free from any mortgage, lien, or any other encumbrance.
(d) The certificate shall be prima facie evidence of the facts recorded therein in any controversy, proceeding, or lawsuit pertaining to or involving the rights that the buyer, or his/her heirs or assignees, have over the property transferred by virtue thereof.
(e) Property registrars shall not charge any fees for recording such certificate or for any copy thereof that they may issue.
(f) The Secretary may adopt and promulgate any such rules as necessary to regulate collectors’ use of the power hereby conferred onto them to buy on behalf of and for the Government of Puerto Rico, any real or personal property, or both, at auctions for the collection of taxes, and he/she may, in specific cases, instruct the agent to buy or to abstain from buying the attached property.
(g) When the property is adjudicated to the Government of Puerto Rico, the Secretary is hereby empowered to pay, from any funds not destined to address other issues, the sum established in the statutes to defend homestead rights to the person with such rights.
(h) The Secretary shall have the authority to transfer, free of charge, to the Department of Agriculture, the title deed of land plots that became or are to become the property of the Government by means of debt enforcement procedures to collect taxes owed, as provided in this section, which qualify for use as a family farm under the program of Title VI of the Puerto Rico Land Act and by express request of the Department of Agriculture. Notwithstanding the foregoing, when the property transferred to the Department of Agriculture is subsequently sold, said Department shall deposit in the Secretary’s General Fund the proceeds from such sale or the amount for which the property was sold, whichever amount is the less.
History —Jan. 31, 2011, No. 1, § 6060.18, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2011.