4.2.4. Support for paying tax liabilities

Payment in financial institutions  

In order to facilitate the payment of taxes, the tax legislation empowers the Tax Agency to authorise credit institutions who request this to act as collaborating bodies in tax collection. As of 31 of December 2015, 131 entities had the authorisation to act as collaborators in the tax collection process.

The total amount collected through these collaborating entities reached 226,646 million euros in 2015, making it the most common system of payment.

During the 2015 tax year, checks were performed on a total of 37 institutions (two of which were performed from an all-encompassing perspective). Furthermore, inspections were conducted in relation to 1,284 bank account attachment actions corresponding to 12 institutions, in order to verify the results of the obstacles reported by them to the Tax Agency.

Finally, during 2015, the Central Team for Control of Collaborating Entities have collected 32 interest charges from 19 entities for late payment. The total amount of the late payment interests collected is 211,443.50 euros.

Deferment and payment by instalments

The taxpayers can request the deferral and fractioning of their debts when temporary treasury problems obstruct the payment.

In 2015 there was a decrease in both the number of applications for payment deferral and by instalments and the amount requested compared to 2014.

Specifically, 1,670,066 applications were submitted for an amount of 10,033.55 million euros, that is to say, 2% less than in 2014 in number and 15% less in amount.

The charts displayed below and in the Appendix show the distribution of the applications for deferral and payment by instalments according to the amount of the debts:

More than 97% of the applications received correspond to debts of less than €18,000, although they represent only 49.5% of the total requested amount. In these deferments, the regulations exempts the debtor of the general obligation of providing proof of the payment.

Furthermore, with the entry into force of Order HAP/2178/2015 of 9 October, published on 20 October 2015, the limit for exemption from the obligation to provide a guarantee in applications to defer payment or to pay by instalments rose to 30,000 euros.

As for the volume of payment deferrals and payments by instalments that have been dealt with, in 2015, 87,844 requests for deferral or payment by instalment amounting to 1,059.59 million euros have been declined, and 1,542,489 agreements have been reached for a total amount of 7,212.9 million euros, for the reasons shown in the table below:

93% of these agreements correspond to debts of less than €18,000, or of less than €30,000 from when the aforementioned Order HAP/2178/2015 comes into force (21 October 2015), which are handled electronically to expedite the process (MPR) and which are exempt from submission of guarantees under the current regulations.

The tables and graphs contained in the Annex and referred to below show the principal magnitudes in this respect: