Operation 'Llamera'

• More than 350 Agency officials have visited 88 premises located in 15 autonomous communities

• The operation has led to the start of inspection actions in relation to 84 companies and 37 related individuals.

• The actions are added to the sending of 'warning letters' and the carrying out of visits by the Inspection Area to other companies in the same sector.

November 16, 2023 .- The Tax Agency yesterday began a coordinated action in 15 autonomous communities against tax fraud in the timber trade sector. The operation, called 'Llamera', involves the start of inspections of 84 companies and 37 related individuals (partners, directors and people from the family environment).

Operation 'Llamera', coordinated by the Tax Agency's Inspection Department, has had the participation of more than 350 officials (more than 320 from the Inspection Area, including staff from the Computer Audit Units, and more than thirty officials from the Agency's Customs Surveillance Service), as well as the support of police officers.

The device deployed yesterday has allowed the appearance at 88 premises of the inspected companies that are located in Andalusia (7), Aragon (6), Asturias (2), Balearic Islands (1), Canary Islands (9), Cantabria (2), Castilla-La Mancha (2), Castilla y León (6), Catalonia (8), Extremadura (1), Galicia (12), Madrid (8), La Rioja (1), Murcia (2) and the Valencian Community (21).

The purpose of this operation is to verify companies dedicated to the marketing of wood – including derived products such as doors, beams, boards, etc. – in which a series of indications of the existence of an underground economy and tax fraud have been analyzed.

Hidden sales in partners' assets emerge

Within the group of taxpayers analysed, companies have been identified whose partners present risks of unjustified increases in assets, increases that could be due to hidden sales by the entity that are materialising in increases in the assets of its partners. This risk affects the partners of more than half of the companies that have begun to be inspected.

When selecting the companies to be checked, it was also taken into account that many of the individuals involved display external signs of wealth that could be indicative of concealing income, such as renting safe deposit boxes or, in some cases, using personal bank cards with high charges.

In turn, and as established in the Guidelines of the 2023 Control Plan, when designing this operation, special attention has been paid to the intensive use of cash as a method of collection.

In the case of companies in verification, the low weight of card collection is due to the characteristics of wholesale trade, where a large part of the income is received by transfer.

However, in some of these companies, the weight of cash deposited in bank accounts was also particularly low, so that beyond the payments made by transfer, which will have to be reviewed from now on after the appearances, the importance in these cases of cash deposits not deposited in accounts that may have been used by the inspected companies to make, in turn, payments in 'black' will be analyzed.

The preliminary analysis also included the analysis of several companies subject to audit where card payments and cash deposits in accounts already accounted for nearly 80% of declared turnover. There are therefore clear indications that, when adding the transfers received and the cash not deposited in accounts, the actual turnover would clearly exceed the declared turnover.

Personages and tax fraud

Through personal appearances such as those carried out in this operation, the Agency is able to access information of vital importance for carrying out the inspection work (actual existing documentation and accounting or auxiliary information, including computer systems for processing information). Now, within the framework of the open inspections that will continue to be carried out in the coming months following the initial collection of evidence, all the documentation obtained will be analysed.

The experience of similar operations carried out previously has shown that this system of action allows for a more effective fight against the black economy or any other non-compliance that can be regularised.

The Guidelines of the 2023 Control Plan emphasize the need for the presence of the Tax Agency in companies in sectors and business models in which there is a risk of the existence of an underground economy. This operation is also accompanied by the sending of 'warning letters' to other companies in the same sector and the carrying out of visits by the Inspection Area for the 'on-site' control of formal and registry obligations.  

Sectoral macro-operations

With the 'Llamera' operation, the Agency has now carried out 23 coordinated sectoral macro-operations in the last decade, with a result up to the end of last year of more than 2,000 completed files and income amounting to 386 million euros. This type of action, in addition to facilitating the detection and regularisation of tax fraud, makes it possible to send a dissuasive message to the groups involved in these practices, which have an impact on public coffers and seriously distort competition in the affected sector itself.