In its mission to inform and assist citizens in fulfilling their tax obligations, the Tax Agency has the Tax Management Department. The development of information and assistance tasks involves the exercise of many and varied functions. To this end, the Tax Management Department has a vast organization. Today we introduce you to the National Tax Management Office, the Informative Declarations Area and the Central Information and Digital Assistance Unit.

The National Tax Management Office was created in 1999 due to the need for a body specialized in the exercise of certain management powers. Initially, the National Tax Administration Office assumed responsibilities as diverse as the approval of vehicles for tax purposes, the maintenance of the Central Registry of Temporary Business Associations or the management of the Tax Agency's Telephone Service Centre.

Today, the National Tax Administration Office exercises its powers over the entire national territory and, exclusively, in relation to the management aspects of practically all the tax figures that must be paid by those taxpayers who are outside of Spain. Thus, among other matters, it exercises its powers in relation to the VAT of businessmen and professionals not established in the territory of application of the tax, the Inheritance and Donation Tax of non-residents, the Wealth Tax due to real obligation, the Non-Resident Income Tax and VAT Single Windows essentially related to cross-border electronic commerce to individuals (formerly MOSS, from Mini One Stop Shop and now OSS, from Stop Shop ).

The Informative Declarations Area , integrated into the General Subdirectorate of Tax Technique of the Tax Management Department, was created in 2022. The launch of the Information Declarations Area responds to the organisational needs that the volume of information obtained via supply requires, especially from the information and assistance point of view for those required to submit information declarations, but also from a technical perspective of design and specification of data models.

In the last decade, information obligations have increasingly affected more circumstances, and of a diverse nature, both at national and international levels. These circumstances require knowing in detail all aspects, not only the tax aspects, of the operations to be modelled (financial area, virtual currencies, nurseries, tourist rentals, planning mechanisms, platform operators, etc.).

The Central Information and Digital Assistance Unit was created in 2021 and reports to the General Subdirectorate of Tax Information and Assistance of the Tax Management Department. Its mission is to improve the quality of information and assistance services and, thereby, to promote voluntary compliance with tax obligations, performing functions that can be grouped into two distinct areas: digital assistance tools and Comprehensive Digital Assistance Administrations (ADI).

The Central Information and Digital Assistance Unit designs and maintains digital assistance tools in collaboration and coordination with the Tax Information Technology Department.

These self-care tools range from virtual assistants to informants, calculators, search engines and aids for completing certain models that have been developed regarding VAT, censuses and Personal Income Tax. Their maintenance is complex due, on the one hand, to frequent regulatory changes and, on the other, in the case of virtual assistants, to the need for constant auditing of the questions consulted, carried out by Agency employees specialized in the subject. Today, design work continues to focus not only on creating new tools, but also on improving existing ones, based on analyzing the degree of user satisfaction to achieve a design adapted to their needs.

In addition, the Central Information and Digital Assistance Unit organises and supervises the information and assistance services of the ADIs, which are characterised by providing this type of service in a specialised manner through non-face-to-face channels, such as telephone, chat or video assistance. To do so, it is based on three pillars: training, dissemination of criteria and auditing of written information provided by the ADIs, in particular, of the responses to requests for information submitted through the INFORMA+ application.

In the current digitalisation framework, the Central Information and Digital Assistance Unit is configured as an instrument to achieve unity of criteria for tax information and assistance services, both in traditional offices and in the new ADIs. This work will undoubtedly help to strengthen legal certainty, which is so necessary in the tax field.