2.2. Staff and budget

For the fulfilment of its mission, the Tax Agency, as of 31 of December 2016, had a staff of 25,014 people, (this includes Tax Agency interns (175) employed through a series of recruitment processes), 1.63% less that in 2015. Of these, 52.77% were women and 47.23% were men, with the average age being 51.53 years (0.39 years more that in 2015).

The organisation of the Tax Agency bases its management on the high degree of specialisation and qualification of the professionals who compose it, in addition to intensive use of the new technologies.

The charts of the Annex set out below show the main figures regarding the staff of the Tax Agency:

The performance of the Tax Agency's function of prevention and fight against tax and customs fraud is based on the work of its employees. A performance index has been developed to measure in average terms the contribution of each employee of the Tax Agency to the results of the fight against fraud, that is, the euros obtained in the fight against fraud, on average, by each employee. This is calculated based on the Results/Staff ratio:

• The numerator consists of the revenues obtained every year in the fight against tax and customs fraud.
• The denominator consists of the total number of civil servants of the Tax Agency at 31 December of each year, excluding interns. Bear in mind that, in addition to the fight against fraud, the Tax Agency's objectives also include providing information and assistance to taxpayers, managing the collection of taxes, and customs procedures and surveillance.

In 2016, each employee of the Tax Agency has taken in, on average, 599,189 euros in the fight against fraud (this excludes interns).

Details and graphs related to this question are found in the following chart of the Annex:

In 2016, the Tax Agency had a budget of 1,370.6 million euros. The total cost amounted to 1,317.3 million euros, 3.2% more than in 2015. The reason for this variation was the early closing date in 2016, which meant that certain projects had not been executed. If it had not been for this, the total cost amount would have been equivalent to 2015. The distribution of recognised obligations by chapters is shown in the following chart of the Annex: