The fundamental mission of the Tax Agency is to promote and ensure the correct application of the tax system. In order to fulfil this task, the Agency must carry out a series of actions that guarantee and facilitate the payment of tax debts, as well as the execution of collection procedures, both for debts of a tax nature and for other debts whose management has been entrusted to the Tax Agency.

The volume of debt under the Tax Agency's collection management goes through various phases that influence the capacity of its Collection Department to address them. These phases range from the absolute possibility of managing them without any limitations other than those imposed by the legal system, to debts whose management is limited or conditioned by internal and external factors that restrict collection activity to different degrees.

Traditionally, a distinction is made between "manageable" debt and "non-manageable" debt, depending on the possibilities that the Collection area can deploy to make the credits effective. These circumstances sometimes arise from the type of debt and its situation (such as outstanding debts in the voluntary period or debts suspended due to appeals, among others). Other times they arise from the debtor's own financial or patrimonial situation (for example, debtors declared bankrupt, debtors involved in bankruptcy proceedings and other circumstances), which affects the debt management capacity.

Situations that limit tax collection management do not prevent the Tax Agency from carrying out other actions. These situations are monitored using appropriate IT tools that allow changes in circumstances to be detected and thus avoid risks that may arise from ignorance of these changes, or due to the passage of time, such as slower management or even the prescription of debts.

Below is a table showing the evolution of the total debt outstanding with the Tax Agency from 2015 to 2022, in millions of euros.

At the end of 2022, outstanding debt amounted to €40.421 billion, remaining in line with the levels of the previous year and being almost 18% lower than the amount recorded in 2015. However, it is important to note that the evolution of the total outstanding debt does not always necessarily reflect a better performance of the Tax Agency's activity, since it may be affected by circumstances beyond its control.

For this reason, it is considered essential that the fifth indicator provided for in the Strategic Plan focuses on "manageable" debt, on which there is full capacity to act. The objective is to complete the management of all manageable debt in the shortest possible time, while continuing to review the situation of debt with limited management for the same purpose. The index is calculated by relating the amount of managed debt to the manageable debt during the executive period. According to the Strategic Plan, this index must be equal to or greater than 0.9. Therefore, the aim is to manage at least 90% of the manageable debt each year.

Despite its usefulness for annual monitoring, and even for shorter periods, as a strategic indicator, its examination should focus on the long term to obtain more significant conclusions, since it will allow determining the trend towards which debt collection management is headed, compared to previous years.

In summary, the debt managed in executive management amounted to 30,993 million euros, which means that in 2022, 92% of the net manageable debt in executive management was managed, which stood at 33,677 million euros. This demonstrates proper debt collection management in fiscal year 2022.