2.2. Staff and budget

To fulfil its tasks, on 31 December 2017, the Tax Agency had a workforce of 25,152 people, 0.55% more than in 2016, 53.01% of which are women and 46.99% men, with an average age of 51.09 (0.44 years less than in 2016). These figures include 159 probationary officials.

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 2017, each employee of the Tax Agency obtained, on average, 591,846 euros in the fight against fraud (not including probationary officials).

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

In 2017, the Tax Agency had a budget of 1,331.2 billion euros. The total cost amounted to 1,289.4 billion euros, 2.1% less than in 2016. This reduction can be partly explained by two factors:

• The most relevant is the centralisation of budgetary management for posting tax notifications, from 1 January 2017, which led to a 94.2% decrease in the item regarding postal notifications.

• In 2016, the chapter regarding real investments was affected by the application of Order HAP/1169/2016, of 14 July, which regulated closing operations at 2016 year end regarding the budget for expenses and financial transactions, bringing forward the deadline for assigning files. As a result of this measure, expenses in 2017 for said chapter increased by 67.2%.

The distribution of recognised obligations by chapters is shown in the following chart of the Annex: