4.1.4. Support for paying tax liabilities

Payment by phone

The amount of income carried out by telephone means amounted to 24 million euros in fiscal year 2021. When assessing this information, it must be taken into consideration that the possibility of payment by telephone is limited to certain administrative settlements in which the debtor is a natural person, and whenever payment is made by the direct account debit procedure. . Thus, if it is considered that the amount of income from telephone means in 2020 amounted to 9.88 million euros, in 2021 there has been an increase of 143%, which shows the good reception of the telephone payment system and a great qualitative and quantitative leap in assistance and information to taxpayers in the area of Collection, taking into account that it began in April 2020 and until that moment was unknown to taxpayers.

Payment in financial institutions 

In fiscal year 2021, no new authorization has been granted to credit institutions so that they can act as collaborators in collection management, with four withdrawals from the provision of the collaboration service. Thus, as of December 31, 2021, 113 credit institutions were authorized to act as collaborators in collection management.

In this year, the amount collected through collaborating entities has reached 277,076 million euros, which, compared to 2020, represents an increase of 11.5% percent.

During fiscal year 2021, verification work was carried out on a total of 70 entities, two of which were controlled from a comprehensive point of view. Likewise, verifications have been carried out on 2,369 accounts seizure actions corresponding to 17 entities, in order to verify the results of the obstacles reported by them to the Tax Administration.

Finally, during 2021, 29 late payment interest settlements have been carried out by the Central Control Team of Collaborating Entities for 57 entities due to late payment. The total amount of late payment interest settled amounted to 342,055.16 euros.

Deferment and payment by instalments

Taxpayers can request the deferral and installment of the payment of their debts when there are temporary treasury difficulties that make payment difficult.

In 2021, both the number of requests for payment deferrals and installments and the amount requested have decreased compared to 2020. In 2021, 2,180,566 requests for payment deferral or installments have been submitted for an amount of 8,250.6 million euros. That is, 18% less than in 2020 in number and 20% less in amount.

The tables listed below and contained in the Annex show the distribution of the applications for deferral and splitting according to the amount of the debts:

Graph no. 23. Applications for deferrals in number. Percentage distribution by amount brackets.

Graph no. 24. Applications for deferrals by amount. Percentage distribution by amount brackets.

Almost 99% of these agreements correspond to debts for an amount less than 30,000, which are subject to computerized management to speed up processing (RAM) and which are, according to current regulations, exempt from providing guarantees.

Regarding payment deferrals and installments resolved in 2021, 2,049,279 agreements have been adopted for a total of 6,737.7 million euros with the meaning and concepts detailed in Table nº 25. Payment deferral and installment agreements (Annex). The tables and charts of the Appendix, referred to below, demonstrate the main magnitudes in this respect:

Table 26. Guarantees in granted deferrals

Graph no. 27. Evolution of the number of deferment requests

Chart 28. Evolution of the amount of deferrals requested (in millions of euros)