Filing an income tax return is the main action that many citizens must take to comply with their tax obligations. The Tax Agency, aware of this, plans an Income Tax Campaign every year in which the taxpayer is the centre of attention and, therefore, sets itself the primary objective of facilitating compliance with this obligation as much as possible, providing personalized assistance to those who request it, and by whatever means they request it (telephone or in person), and, on the other hand, making available to taxpayers who wish to do so the tools that allow them to complete the declaration themselves. This purpose, and no other, is what has always driven the constant improvement of the assistance systems for the preparation of the Income Tax return, which has meant adopting measures aimed, on the one hand, at facilitating the completion of the return and, on the other, at speeding up the processing of the millions of returns that are submitted each year (already more than 22 million), and thus being able to make the refunds as quickly as possible.

Each of the changes adopted is based on an in-depth analysis of a social, functional, technical and also legal nature, which has led to a constant evolution in the ways of preparing and presenting the declaration, which began, more than 40 years ago, with the presentation through pre-printed paper forms, and continued with the provision of the "PADRE" assistance program, the development of the draft declaration, until reaching the current Renta WEB system that can be used on any device.

These improvements, as could not be otherwise, have come hand in hand with technological advances, which facilitate the application of tax regulations, and make it possible to overcome the difficulty of manually preparing the tax return.

In this context, of evolving for the better, the convenience of eliminating paper was analyzed as a strategic decision in the operation of the Spanish tax system, taking into account, among many other analyses, that in the 2012 Income Tax Campaign only 0.18% of taxpayers had filled out their declaration by hand, and that of these declarations filled out by hand, 60% had errors that involved requests to the taxpayer and unnecessary inconveniences when it came to, for example, arithmetic calculations, avoidable by using assistance programs, which directly affected delays in the issuance of the refund that might correspond to them and the increase in administrative burdens.

However, recently, different forums are echoing the so-called measure of: "recent elimination of paper in Income Tax."  This information is incorrect, since the first Income Tax Campaign in which paper submission no longer existed, understood as manual completion by taxpayers of the forms for the IRPF declaration, was the 2013 Income Tax Campaign. Therefore, the recent change is not; The preparation of paper tax returns disappeared in 2014, for the 2013 Income Tax Campaign, a measure established in Order HAP/455/2014, of March 20, which approved the IRPF model for the 2013 fiscal year.

In successive campaigns, progress has been made to improve the program or form for assistance in filing Income Tax returns each year. The information and assistance measures have been updated, and work has been and continues to be carried out under the premise that assistance to taxpayers during the campaign is the main focus of the campaign.

Among these advances or technical improvements we must highlight the elimination of the pre-declaration, undertaken in the IRPF Campaign of 2018. The only thing this change meant was that, once the draft or tax return had been completed, if the taxpayer wanted to go to the bank to pay in person, instead of printing the entire document, he or she would print only the payment document, but the return was already submitted at that time, so it is no longer necessary for the collaborating entities to send the return to the Agency for processing.

The organization of the Income Tax Campaign covers the general demand for assistance in completing it, and of course, also that of our elderly, with whom we have special sensitivity and a protocol has been signed in relation to assistance to them.

In every evolution there are setbacks, problems to solve and aspects to improve, and work continues on this. What we as a country should not allow, and we hope will not happen, is the regression of a system that works. The great advance of eliminating paper a decade ago has led us to make improvements and be more efficient, always seeking the benefit for citizens, in this case the taxpayers, which is all of us.