Tax Agency obtains 10,950 million in 2013 for the fight against fraud despite the fall in taxable bases
Annual balance of the results of tax inspections
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Homogeneous control results grew by 1.9% to 9.158 billion euros, and within them, income from settlements and collection management acts, by 6.8%
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93,261 inspections have been carried out, 10.5% more than in 2012, and more than 2.2 billion have been paid to large taxpayers, 40% of the total.
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6,658 visits were made to uncover opaque rentals, 40% more, 1,152 in relation to communities of owners and 2,657 on billing and cash payments
March 28, 2014.- The Tax Agency obtained 10.95 billion euros in 2013 as a result of its work in preventing and fighting fraud. This overall figure includes a concept that was not previously accounted for, the reduction from requests for rectification of self-assessments, amounting to 471 million euros. For the purposes of year-on-year comparisons, the total results stand at EUR 10.479 billion. These results consolidate those of 2012 and 2013 as the highest in the history of the Agency, and are achieved in a context of a sharp decline in the tax bases subject to audit. The average debt settled by the Inspection Office in 2013 was 216,334 euros.
These results follow the uniqueness of the control results for the years 2011 and 2012, which lies in the existence of a significant volume of court rulings in favour of the Administration that generated extraordinarily high revenues for these concepts when incorporated into the public coffers in that year, regardless of the time at which the corresponding settlements were made.
In terms of value, most of these rulings affected proceedings initiated by the Central Delegation of Large Taxpayers (DCGC). In 2013, the DCGC recorded income amounting to 463 million euros as a result of rulings, compared to 1,412 million in 2012, 1,035 million in 2011 and 765 million in 2010.
Improving the homogeneous result
If the amounts entered in 2012 and 2013 corresponding to all the favorable rulings to the DCGC resolved in both years, as well as the corrections of self-assessments computed since 2013, are discounted from the control results, the homogeneous result of the fight against fraud obtained by the Tax Agency (the 'indicator 3', which does not include late declarations without prior request and income from tax crimes), improves by 1.9% in 2013, reaching 9,158 million euros. Indicator 3.1.1, which measures revenue from settlements and collection management actions and is the core of the economic results of the fight against fraud, has grown by 6.8%.
This revenue is broken down into income from control actions ('indicator 3.1') and reduction of returns ('indicator 3.2'). As for the former, discounting the DCGC rulings in 2012 and 2013, they grew by 4.2% to 7.724 billion euros. The result of the reduction in refunds is 1,434 million, affected by the fall in the amounts requested in recent years.
The Tax Agency's income from the fight against fraud also comes from late declarations (outside the voluntary deadline) without prior request and from tax crime files. The revenue collected from these concepts ('indicator 4.1') amounts to 859 million euros. Within this figure, income from tax crimes, originating from collection orders from the courts, grew slightly to 41 million euros.
Inspections increase by 10%
In parallel with this evolution of the results of the fight against fraud, in 2013 the inspection activities were considerably strengthened. Last year, the Tax Agency carried out a total of 93,261 inspection and investigation actions by the Inspection Department, which is 10.5% more than the previous year.
Measured in homogeneous terms, which allows the actions to be weighted according to their different complexity, more than 600,000 actions were carried out, highlighting the increase in inspections in the professional sector (+43.5%) and irregular billing (+44.4%).
This reinforcement of the Tax Agency's inspection activities has made it possible to offset the negative effect on tax collection of the fight against fraud caused by the fact that in 2013, years of economic crisis are already being fully investigated, with tax bases in permanent decline.
In this context, the amount settled by the Tax Agency's Inspection bodies amounts to 5.651 billion euros, of which almost 40% (more than 2.2 billion euros) correspond to DCGC files.
Effective debt collection
The strengthening of fraud control has also been transferred to the tax collection area. The Tax Agency has thus once again improved its ability to collect previously settled debts. After improving the collection actions in the executive phase with income in 2012, in 2013 the results of these actions have grown by 10.1%, up to 6,809 million euros, so that the income in the executive phase has already accumulated an increase of more than 30% in two years.
Also in the area of collection, 3,173 precautionary measures have been adopted to guarantee the collection of debts, 6.7% more than the previous year, of which those carried out using the new tools offered by the Anti-Fraud Law of 2012 totalled 1,756 last year, for an amount exceeding 600 million euros. In turn, the number of liability transfers, which allow for increased debt collection possibilities, increased by 58.5% to reach 11,697 actions.
Submerged economy
Although the results of the fight against fraud always have a necessary component of control of declared activity, since 2012 the Tax Agency has been promoting a special plan against the underground economy. Within the framework of this plan, and while emphasizing inspection actions related to new sources of information, such as that derived from the Form 720 declaration of assets and rights abroad, that from countries that are no longer considered tax havens or that of electricity consumption, the Agency has reinforced its on-site actions aimed at the on-site control of formal and registry obligations in fiscal risk sectors.
In this area, of the 21,741 formal verification actions completed in 2013, the most notable were the 6,658 visits carried out to uncover submerged rents, almost 40% more than in 2012, and the new programmes defined both to obtain information from communities of owners in relation to their suppliers (1,152 actions), and to verify compliance with the cash limit and the reality of billed services (2,657 visits).
In addition to these three programmes, 10,270 actions have been carried out, also within the general plan of more than 21,000 visits, within the framework of a specific programme on the underground economy, where 478 actions on suspected issuers of false invoices stand out, of which tax risk has been detected in 37% of the cases.
In addition to these actions carried out by the inspection bodies, which aim to discourage the use of tax avoidance practices and promote citizen tax awareness, the collection bodies have also reinforced the number of visits linked to the fight against fraud in the collection phase, closing 2013 with 3,078 visits to carry out seizures, gather information and detect suspected insolvencies, 39% more than in 2012 and almost double that of 2011.