Operation 'Llamera'

• More than 350 Agency officials have appeared in 88 locations located in 15 Autonomous Communities

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

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

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

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

The device deployed yesterday has allowed people to appear in 88 premises of the inspected companies that are located in Andalusia (7), Aragon (6), Asturias (2), the Balearic Islands (1), the 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 Valencian Community (21 ).

The objective 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 fraud have been analyzed. fiscal.

Emergence of hidden sales in the assets of partners

Within the group of taxpayers analyzed, companies have been identified whose partners present risks of unjustified increases in assets, increases that could be due to hidden sales of the entity that were materializing 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 verified, it was also taken into account that many of the linked natural persons show external signs of wealth that could constitute indications of concealment of income, such as the rental of safe deposit boxes or in some cases the use of personal bank cards with heavy charges.

At the same time, and as established by the 2023 Control Plan Guidelines, when designing this operation, special attention has been paid to the intensive use of cash as a collection method.

In the case of companies in verification, the low weight of payment by card is given by the characteristics of wholesale trade, where a good part of the income is received by transfer.

However, in some of these companies it happens that the weight of cash deposited in bank accounts was also especially low, so that beyond the charges made by transfer, which will have to be reviewed from now on After the appearances, the importance in these cases of cash income not entered into accounts that may have been used by the inspected companies to make, in turn, payments in 'B' will be analyzed.

In the previous analysis, it was also possible to analyze the case of several companies subject to verification where card payments and cash deposited in accounts already accounted for close to 80% of the declared turnover. Therefore, there are clear indications that, when adding, in turn, the transfers received and the cash not deposited in accounts, the actual billing would clearly exceed that declared.

Impersonations and tax fraud

Through 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 (documentation and real existing accounting or auxiliary information, including computer information processing systems). Now, within the framework of the open inspections that will continue to be carried out in the coming months from this initial evidence collection, all the documentation obtained will be analyzed.

The experience of similar operations carried out previously has shown that this system of action allows a more effective fight against the underground economy or any other non-compliance susceptible to regularization.

The Guidelines of the 2023 Control Plan emphasize the need for the Tax Agency to be present 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 'notice letters' to other companies in the same sector and the carrying out of visits by the Inspection Area for 'on-site' control of formal and registry obligations.  

Sectoral macro-operations

With the 'Llamera' operation there are now 23 coordinated sectoral macro-operations deployed by the Agency in the last decade, with a result until the end of last year of more than 2,000 files completed and income amounting to 386 million euros. These types of actions, in addition to facilitating the detection and regularization of tax fraud, allow a dissuasive message to be transmitted to the groups involved in these practices, which have an impact on public coffers and seriously distort competition in the affected sector itself.