2015 Tax Control Plan

 

• Nationally-coordinated verifications will be conducted in establishments with sales to end consumers which may use techniques of concealment of their activity
• The action plan on the digital economy will make it possible to track more than 200,000 domains to incorporate relevant information into the Tax Agency's database
• In the international sphere, vigilance will be strengthened on structures and companies which artificially erode the Spanish tax base and on non-residents who carry out sporadic economic activity in Spain
• Investigations will be intensified in the Tax Collection Area on financial movements, and more streamlined management of debts in insolvency proceedings will be combined with promotion of companies' viability

 

March 11, 2015.- The Tax Agency will reinforce its control actions this year with the aim of uncovering undeclared activity that generates unfair competition, harming companies and individuals who do comply correctly with their tax obligations.

These actions, together with an intensification of those to be carried out on the submerged economy in collaboration with the Employment Inspectorate, the capture on Internet of relevant tax information for control tasks and the investigation of assets held abroad based on the information provided in the statement of assets and rights held abroad, will mark the 2015 Tax Control Plan, the directives of which are published today in the Official State Gazette.

Actions will be carried out addressed to uncovering concealed activities and incomes. Among other groups, actions will be taken in relation with individuals who totally or partially assign residences on the Internet or in other ways, and with companies which do not duly comply with their tax obligations. All of this will be done while continuing to reinforce on-site visits to detect undeclared irregular incomes.

The Tax Agency will also increase control actions in cases in which it observes the existence of significant risks of under-declaration of the activity.

Furthermore, the possible use of computer programs (' -use software') that alter the actual billing, renumber tickets and modify prices or simply allow part of the billing to be suppressed will be analysed very carefully.

 

Unfair competition

This type of conduct is considered especially serious, because it displays the express and deliberate intention to defraud the Public Treasury through the under-declaration of sales with regard to the real billing figures, in addition to representing a serious alteration of the general conditions of competition.

To guarantee greater effectiveness of the inspection activity, coordinated selective activities will be planned at nationwide level with the purpose of combating activity concealment techniques. Action will especially be taken in relation with taxpayers who carry out final sales to the public, due to the great difficulties of verification that these activities have traditionally had.

Coordinated activities will be complemented with conventional inspections and formal verifications in certain sectors, thus contributing to the creation of awareness among taxpayers on the need to abandon these practices.

In 2015, the Tax Agency will continue to reinforce the fight against the submerged economy through on-site interventions with computerised audit staff who will analyse and verify the programs and files of taxpayers' electronic devices.

Similarly, on-site activities will be maintained addressed to checking true compliance with the limitation on cash payments established in the 2012 Anti-Fraud Act (Act 7/2012), and on-site verifications will be made of the census situation of taxpayers regarding whom there are indications of delocalisation or simulation of activity in order to conceal their real activity or the real beneficiary of their revenues.

 

Tracking fraud on the Internet

Similarly, the Tax Agency will tackle new forms of fraud that occur on the Internet, both through the capture and exploitation of the public information available in Internet that allows concealed activities or illegally traded goods to be discovered, and through inspection actions on manufacturers or service providers who market their goods or services on Internet, in order to guarantee the appropriate taxation in Spain of the incomes generated in that economic activity.

The information will be captured by means of a series of IT tools which will enable the information to be ordered and systematised. It is planned to cross-reference the information of more than 200,000 domains for later incorporation into the databases of the Tax Agency. Similarly, and in order to evaluate from the taxation point of view the economic importance of e-commerce websites, the indications of success offered by companies specialising in website analysis and assessment and in social networks will be captured.

Additionally, the technology of the social networks for analysing trading operations between economic agents will be used for the purpose of identifying behavioural patterns corresponding to fraudulent activities (VAT schemes, use of front men, etc.),

 

Concealed equity abroad

The investigation of concealed equity abroad on the basis of the information provided by Form 720 of declaration of assets and rights held abroad will be a basic pillar in the search for delocalised assets. More than 7,000 taxpayers are already in the investigation stage on whom the Tax Agency has indications that either they had to present form 720 and did not do so or they did not declare their foreign assets correctly.

This wide-ranging inspection plan will be accompanied by the implementation, in the shortest possible time, of the automatic exchange of financial accounts via the Common Information Standard agreed by Spain and fifty more tax jurisdictions last October.

 

International taxation

In the field of international taxation, special attention will be paid to taxpayers with fiscal residence in Spain who use hybrid instruments or structures (with different tax treatment in another country), to avoid or reduce their tax payments to the Spanish Treasury. This reinforcement of the inspection activity will complement the new measures incorporated into the reform of Corporation Tax in relation with hybrids.

Also to combat abusive tax planning, and in the context of the work carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD BEPS project), the control of payments abroad and complex operations to which they result will be intensified. of application, paying special attention to the structures in which “ conduit companies ” (companies interposed to obtain the benefits of a bilateral agreement) intervene.

Likewise, the controls on fictitious operations and residence locations in tax havens will be maintained and the actions regarding the verification of economic activities conducted in Spain by non-residents will be reinforced, with special attention to situations of transient residence (sporadic activity in Spain).

In addition, special attention will continue to be dedicated to the inadmissible use of companies to reduce the taxation of individuals, to the analysis of external signs of wealth, to issuers of irregular invoices and to organised fraud schemes in VAT, a field in which emphasis will be placed on early detection of organisations and detection of plans for mass acquisition by untraceable persons at symbolic prices of companies on which significant fiscal contingencies have fallen or are about to fall.

Additionally, actions will be intensified on economic sectors which, not being especially affected by the decrease of activity deriving from the economic crisis, continue to present tax returns inconsistent with indications that reveal significant levels of billing or economic capacity.

 

Streamlining of complex collection control

In the Tax Collection area, the investigation of cases of great evidentiary complexity will be reinforced in cases of derivations of liability for amounts outstanding, in order to combat substantial asset-stripping operations. As a complement to these actions and the use of protective measures to consolidate the collection of debts, investigations of financial movements will be reinforced. Similarly, the management will be expedited of debts in the embargo phase and debts affected by insolvency proceedings, while fostering the viability of companies through all the legally provided channels.

 

In the penal field, promotion will be given to legal actions to be brought for the alleged commission of criminal offences of insolvency involving malpractice, which actions will be combined with increased control of insolvent debtors in order to detect unforeseen situations of solvency and the participation of such debtors in new mercantile companies.

With regard to control of Customs and Excise Duties, special importance will continue to be given to actions for detecting tobacco smuggling, not only through the traditional controls of the entire chain of production, distribution, logistics and marketing, but also through the detection of new production or introduction techniques in Spain.

Similarly, controls will be strengthened in customs enclosures of travellers and goods from lower-taxation zones, through the application of risk analysis techniques or the use of non-intrusive inspection to detect smuggled or incorrectly declared goods by scanning containers, vehicles or packages.