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Fiscal year 2018

Filing

The objective of the Annual Tax Collection Report is to offer information on the level and annual evolution of tax revenues managed by the Tax Agency (AEAT) on behalf of the State, the Autonomous Communities. and the CC.LL. of the Common Fiscal Regime Territory.

The behavior of collection series is not always easy to understand. Its strong variations contrast with the more parsimonious evolution shown by summary variables such as GDP or consumption. There are, however, reasons for these discrepancies to occur; regulatory modifications, changes in tax management or the differential impact that economic evolution has on the different tax bases are some of them.

For this reason, and in order to adequately understand the behavior of collection and its relationship with economic flows, the Annual Tax Collection Report uses an analysis method in which not only tax revenues are analyzed in cash terms, but these are linked to the accrued taxes obtained by aggregating the returns and these, in turn, to the effective rates and bases declared by taxpayers . Thus, the explanation scheme in each tax figure has three levels:

  1. Analysis of the evolution of the tax base and the average effective rate, a level at which the basic source of information is the annual statistics available on the AEAT website.
  2. Analysis of the evolution of accrued taxes, prepared from the periodic self-assessment declarations presented by taxpayers in compliance with their tax obligations.
  3. Analysis of the collection in cash terms, detailing the elements that may have influenced a different behavior of the income with respect to the obligations generated.

The scheme used tries to cover the entire tax payment process: from the moment the taxable event that generates the obligation for the taxpayer occurs until it is finally settled and the tax is paid. It should be noted that the information on tax bases and taxes accrued for the last two years is provisional.

This method of analysis is possible thanks to the information system available to the Tax Agency, which allows the preparation of annual and quarterly aggregate series of tax bases, accrued taxes, effective rates and cash collection for each tax, all constructed from the microdata provided. by taxpayers. This aggregated information can be found on the Tax Agency website ( www.agenciatributaria.es ).

On the other hand, this same conceptual structure is what supports the budgetary forecast of tax revenues. Its estimate is prepared taking as reference the economic scenario forecast for the following year. The growth of the tax bases is adjusted so that they adapt to the evolution profiles projected by the scenario. Based on the tax bases and hypotheses on the behavior of effective rates, the accrued taxes are obtained which, taken to the income period, give rise to the expected cash collection.

This year's report maintains the structure that was introduced last year, with a short text with the main facts that characterized the evolution of income in 2018 and with references to the tables through hyperlinks to an external file that contains the data series since 1995. Along with this file of tables, two more files are made available to users, one with information related to income by Delegations since 2007 and another with the series of rights recognized since 2004. In addition, as is usual in the monthly reports, there is another file with the main regulatory developments and the series of legal rates of the different taxes.

THE DIRECTOR OF THE TAX STUDIES AND STATISTICS SERVICE