The new computer management model of the Economic-Administrative Courts (TEAs) and the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) is described in the Resolution of January 13, 2021, of the State Secretariat for Finance (SEH).

This new model is being developed through the joint work of TEA, DGT and the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT), as well as with the participation of the General Directorate of the Cadastre (DGC) under the coordination of the Inspection of Services of the Ministry of Finance and the State Secretariat of Finance (SEH) and through very important adaptations of the physical infrastructure and horizontal applications of the AEAT to enable this multi-agency management.

 Its main objectives are:

• The best citizen service, enabling new digital communication channels that will be available through the electronic headquarters of each organization.

• Reducing processing times for economic-administrative appeals (REAs) and tax consultations through comprehensive digital processing.

• Optimizing investments, saving costs and standardizing security measures, through the use of the AEAT's physical infrastructure and the use of common AEAT services (power of attorney, notifications, electronic registration, information notices, My Files, etc.).

• Comprehensive knowledge management, facilitating citizen assistance and compliance within a framework of legitimate trust. For this purpose, a Single Knowledge Base (SKB) will be created from the three organizations, which is the project described in this article.

It should be noted that the participants share the same obligation: to make known their interpretations of the tax rules (art. 87 LGT). The starting point is that the information that each organization provides, both to its staff and to the public, is currently scattered across different databases:

• TEA Resolutions.

• Tax queries from the DGT.

• AEAT's INFORMA program.

This forces both citizens and staff of agencies to perform a costly and error-prone task of integrating information to determine the applicable tax criteria. To solve this problem, the creation of the BUC was decided upon, whose purpose is:

• To store and manage all tax criteria derived from questions made to the AEAT, consultations with the DGT and the resolutions of the TEA, which can be supplemented with those reflected in subsequent judgments of the Spanish and European courts of justice.

• To unify the sources, offering a single interpretation or criterion on the same issue and allowing one to know the current legal position of the administrative and judicial bodies regarding a specific tax issue, all in accordance with the regulations on tax consultations of the DGT and the resolutions that constitute doctrine or unify criteria in the economic-administrative field.”

• To offer taxpayers access to tax criteria through the electronic offices of the agencies and to internal users on the agencies' intranet, responding to the needs of basic and advanced internal and external users.

For the organization and governance of the BUC project, this system has been provided with a Governing Council. Also included in the project is the BOE (Official State Gazette), which has provided the necessary services to download the rules and precepts of the BOE that are the basis of the BUC's regulations module.

The following BUC project milestones have been completed:

• Development of the service for obtaining regulations from the BOE (Official State Gazette).

• Definition of a common data model and coding system for the BUC that allows the incorporation of criteria and documents from the three organizations, the most important entities being:

  • The Criterion: the interpretative summaries of the regulations.

  • The Precept: the regulations to which each entity refers, whether it is a consultation (answered by the DGT), a resolution (from the TEA) and jurisprudence, or a question (INFORMA from the AEAT). This field, which corresponds to an article or a fraction thereof, is essential to relate the object to which each entity refers and, consequently, to be able to relate them.

• Development of modules for the management of rules and precepts, which includes an algorithm for breaking down rules into the necessary fractions of articles (numbers, letters, paragraphs) since the BOE only goes down to the article level.

• Development of modules for the management of criteria and documents.

A first basic version of the BUC is expected to be available during fiscal year 2026: During this first semester the developments will be finalized and throughout the second semester it will be implemented.  The remaining milestones in 2026 are:

• Process of updating regulatory changes obtained from the BOE.

• Migration of the knowledge databases of the three organizations to the BUC, undertaking beforehand a purification of the quality of said information.

• Development of search engines for tax documents and criteria that will be used by taxpayers and staff of each agency.

• Integration of the BUC with the new management applications of TEA and DGT, developed within the new computer management model, which will process taxpayer queries more efficiently.

• Final deployment of the application on the electronic headquarters and on the intranet of the organizations.

Once the system is implemented, it will be able to evolve through the use of artificial intelligence tools in different areas, all under the necessary human supervision. The features being evaluated are:

• It helps migrate knowledge databases to the BUC.

• Assist in the generation of summaries or criteria.

• Generating proposed responses for taxpayers.

The BUC is expected to provide great value to citizens by facilitating their access to the current criteria on each tax issue, and to also contribute to a significant reduction in tax disputes.