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Methodology

Introduction

Introduction

The "Economic and Tax Results in VAT 2019" statistic is a census-based survey based on information provided by economic agents subject to Value Added Tax through the Annual VAT Summary declaration (form 390), as well as the periodic declarations, forms 303 and 322.

Royal Decree 596/2016 of December 2 establishes an obligation for monthly VAT taxpayers to maintain invoice records through the Tax Agency's electronic office. This new management system is called "Immediate Provision of Information" (SII). The entry into force of the Royal Decree on July 1, 2017 meant the elimination of the obligation to present the form 340 and the form 390, and therefore, for the preparation of these statistics, from the 2017 financial year, a pseudo-declaration of the form 390 is incorporated for subjects covered by the SII, in addition to the one that was already being carried out for exempt subjects, using different data sources (see "Explanatory note of the methodological changes of 2017).

The annual summary data, which are presented regardless of their origin (form 390 or aggregation of periodic declarations), provide information on the main components of the economic variables to be analyzed, such as sales, purchases, investment and foreign trade; as well as the tax variables that determine the VAT balance per declaration and the main tax parameters of the tax: average sales and purchase rates, pro rata, etc.; variables, all of which together explain the tax collection.

The individual value of VAT returns, which contain detailed information on the economic transactions carried out by entrepreneurs, is transformed, through their aggregation and appropriate statistical classification, into a tool for analyzing the economy and tax collection, for which the information presented in evolutionary tables is especially useful.

The statistics "Economic and tax results in VAT" are based on four different tax sources: the annual summary declarations corresponding to the taxpayers of the Value Added Tax (form 390), the periodic declarations-settlements (forms 303 and 322) of those entrepreneurs exempt from presenting the annual summary, the declarations corresponding to the operations assimilated to the import (form 380) and the customs declarations corresponding to the imports of goods and the liquidation of the tax contained in the SAD (Single Administrative Document). To ensure the integrated processing of information, the following are included: on the one hand, the quotas accrued for "Operations assimilated to imports" and for "Imports" and, on the other, the deductions for "Operations assimilated to imports", granting both operations the same treatment in the settlement of form 390 as that granted to the quotas accrued and deducted for "Intra-Community acquisitions". With these considerations, each settlement of form 390 is recalculated, completing the calculations with the data referred to where applicable.

However, there are specific aspects that will allow this publication to be used as a tool for tax collection analysis:

  • Construction of the concept of period revenue as a sum of several components, all defined as the product of an economic variable and its weighted average tax rate.
  • Definition of a tax collection configuration account in which, in addition to the collection components, tax balances are defined as analysis variables that gradually incorporate the effects of the various regulatory aspects of the tax.
  • Implementation of two new criteria for classifying or grouping declarants:
    • CLASS: whose objective is to isolate the group of declarants whose behavior towards the tax is the most general, that is, the one that is not affected by any regulatory specialty that distorts their settlement. This class has been called "General Deduction" and is distinguished from those who file declarations under the "Simplified Regime", from those required to charge lower VAT rates than those actually paid, and from those who carry out activities subject to special deduction regimes.
    • COLLECTIVE: whose objective is to group the declarants according to the cause that originates the sign of their collection of the period, in this way those who generate a positive balance are differentiated from those who obtain a negative balance. In the latter case, a distinction will be made as to whether the cause is the performance of foreign activity, investments, or a consequence of the activity.

VAT is the second largest source of non-financial revenue for the State, after Personal Income Tax, hence the emphasis placed on the contribution to tax collection analysis offered by this publication.

This publication is a key component of the program the State Tax Administration Agency has undertaken to provide analysts and the general public with some of the information held by the Public Treasury as a result of tax collection efforts.