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Suggestions Box for the Tax Fraud Prevention Plan

Results of the fight against fraud. In 2007, direct revenue from control activities amounted to 5,954 million, 12.1% more than in 2006. Revenue from voluntary adjustments amounted to 1.48 billion euros, 34.9% more than the previous year. In the real estate sector, the debt settled in 2007 amounted to 1.2 billion euros, 65% more, and the number of taxpayers inspected increased by 31%. The value of money laundering crimes reported to the courts by the Tax Agency in its investigations in 2007 reached 1.067 billion euros, almost three times more than the previous year.

February 13, 2008. The Secretary of State for Finance and Budgets, Carlos Ocaña, and the Director General of the Tax Agency, Luis Pedroche, have presented the results of the first three years of implementation of the Tax Fraud Prevention Plan, which has raised a total of nearly 19.4 billion euros. To put this figure into perspective, it is enough to point out that the total amount of public investment in infrastructure in the 2008 General State Budget is just over 15 billion euros.

In 2007, direct revenue from control actions, including the reduction of refunds, amounted to 5.954 billion euros, 12.1% more than in 2006. In addition, the revenue from voluntary regularisations attributable to the induced effect of the Tax Fraud Prevention Plan increased by 34.9% to 1.48 billion euros. The number of control actions in 2007 was 271,064.

The revenue obtained from the Tax Fraud Prevention Plan therefore amounted to 7.434 billion euros in 2007, to which must be added the results from 2005 and 2006, which were 5.526 billion euros and 6.407 billion euros respectively.

Fraud control in the real estate sector

The guidelines of the Tax Fraud Prevention Plan favoured comprehensive control over all economic activity related to the real estate sector, considering that it can be an important source of fraud. In 2007, 8,501 taxpayers in this sector were inspected, 31% more than in 2006, and a debt of 1.223 billion euros was discovered, 65% more than the previous year.

Within the real estate capital returns, the declaration of rents has increased significantly thanks, among other measures, to the mandatory inclusion of the cadastral reference number of the properties. In the 2006 Personal Income Tax, rents worth 12.442 billion euros were declared, 3.115 billion euros more than in the 2003 Personal Income Tax, the last declaration prior to the Tax Fraud Prevention Plan. The number of taxpayers filing these returns reached 1,447,449, 268,000 more than in the 2003 Personal Income Tax.

In 2008, the results of more than 80,000 property development transactions will be analysed by the Tax Agency after three years of work and gathering information on the comprehensive process of urban development.

Guarantees for the collection of tax debt

The Tax Fraud Prevention Plan also places emphasis on improving the collection of debts discovered during anti-fraud actions. In this regard, actions to ensure debt collection have doubled in the last three years, reaching 1,313 in 2007, compared to 649 in 2004. These actions are carried out in a coordinated manner between the Inspection and Collection departments in order to prevent the depletion of assets by fraudsters.

Fight against money laundering

In 2007, the Tax Agency reported money laundering offences to the courts for an amount of 1.067 billion euros, as a result of more complex investigations into drug trafficking and the underground economy. The 2007 figure represents an increase of almost 200% over the previous year thanks to the completion of investigations that had been initiated in previous years.