3.3. Results obtained in accordance with other indicators established in previous years' Target Plans
The Objective Plans prior to 2018 included indicators referring to the results derived from fraud prevention and control actions. This term is used to measure the tax collection results of the Tax Agency's actions to combat fraud.
However, these indicators provide a measurement of the Agency's control activities on a cash basis (settlements collected regardless of the year in which the settlement was made, collected fees that had been reported in the fiscal year or in previous fiscal years, late settlements entered, as well as denial of requested refunds), and the overall amount may be conditioned by extraordinary results that are not very representative of the main activity of the Tax Agency, which will not adequately reflect the activity of the organization.
Furthermore, the objective of maximising anti-fraud results indicators may not be fully aligned with one of the basic functions entrusted to the Tax Agency, namely increasing voluntary tax collection. Although legislative measures have been adopted to increase self-assessed and paid taxes (eg. limitation of financial expenses, obligation to declare assets abroad, investment of the taxable person in VAT in real estate transfers...), their effectiveness would be limited if the behavior of the Tax Agency were subsequently passive.
Furthermore, the anti-fraud results indicators only reflect part of the effects of the Tax Agency's activity, with a time frame limited to a specific year, which can lead to an erroneous understanding of them as an incentive to obtain results in the short term to the detriment of carrying out preventive actions or checks of greater complexity and duration. This purely quantitative form of monitoring must therefore be overcome.
Tax revenues are conditioned by a series of external variables such as economic growth, the evolution of internal demand, the employment rate, inflation, regulatory changes, the rate of refunds, etc. Therefore, its evolution is not a sufficiently consistent indicator of the evolution of voluntary compliance, which makes it difficult to recognize that the actions carried out by the Tax Agency also have an impact on said evolution.
All these issues and the greater focus on fraud assistance and prevention actions, as reflected in the 2020-2023 Strategic Plan and its addenda, advise measuring the actions of the Tax Agency through other indicators. The indicator that most accurately reflects how tax behaviour evolves in our country is the one that compares the differential evolution of the aggregate tax bases with that of the reference macroeconomic magnitudes, since a constant line of action of the Tax Agency is to direct its actions towards the emergence and expansion of the tax bases.
Without prejudice to the above, information is provided on the results obtained in 2021 in accordance with the anti-fraud results indicators included in the Objective Plans for years prior to 2018.
The Tax Agency's collection results in the prevention and fight against fraud reached a total amount of 16,896 million euros in 2021, which represents a decrease of 2.19% compared to the previous year. However, it should be noted that both in 2020 and 2021 there have been extraordinary reductions in split payments, which are therefore difficult to repeat in the future. Excluding these extraordinary items in both years, fraud prevention and control results grew by 17% in 2021 to reach €14.956 billion.
In relation to this overall result, the efficiency index measures the amount collected from these anti-fraud actions for each euro spent by the Tax Agency. To calculate it, the following magnitudes are used:
• The numerator includes, in millions of euros, the amount collected from the fight against tax and customs fraud.
• The denominator includes, in millions of euros, the amount of the annual budget of the Tax Agency, in terms of recognized obligations. It includes the cost of all the functions performed by the Tax Agency, since they all contribute to the fulfilment of its mission of ensuring the correct application of the State's tax and customs system.
According to the efficiency index, in 2021, for every euro spent at the Agency, 11.19 euros were collected in the fight against fraud, a figure slightly lower than the previous year.
Data and graphs related to this issue can be found in Annex Table No. 16. Efficiency Index .
The total amount is made up of two parts: “Results of the prevention and control of tax and customs fraud” for which 16,141 million euros were obtained in 2021 and “Other results of the prevention and control of tax and customs fraud” with a result in this same period of 755 million euros.