Civic tax education

• An initiative that the Agency launched in 2008 during its visits to schools to explain the social meaning of taxes and the damage caused by tax fraud is being revived.
• Before the awards ceremony, the students read the winning text and the two finalist essays.
• In the last school year, 225 trainers from the different territorial delegations of the AEAT have provided 2,100 hours of training to more than 35,000 students

November 23, 2018.- María Victoria Pérez Martínez, a fourth-year ESO student at the 'Cervantes' institute in Madrid, is the winner of the 2018 national writing competition for schools organized by the Tax Agency within the framework of its Civic-Tax Education Program. The finalists were Ana Yong Aranda Gómez, from the sixth year of primary school at the 'La Anunciata' school in León and Marta Sola Aguilera, from the third year of secondary school at the 'Francisco Grande Covián' institute in Zaragoza.

The awards to the three schoolgirls were presented today by the director of the Tax Agency, Jesús Gascón, at an event held at the Agency's headquarters, attended by relatives and teachers of the award-winning students, who read their writings chosen from among the different essays previously selected by the territorial delegations of the AEAT.

The Tax Agency is thus resuming the national writing competition it established in 2008. The decision to reactivate this national competition, which in recent years was only carried out in territorial delegations of the AEAT, is part of a series of measures aimed at strengthening the Civic-Tax Education Program that the Agency has been developing since 2003.

The programme includes the participation of civil servants, who give talks to pupils in their last years of primary school and secondary school, vocational training and university students.

The programme's activities, carried out in schools and education centres, also include training courses for teachers and open days for schools at the 52 regional delegations of the Tax Agency. In the last academic year, 225 trainers from the different territorial delegations of the AEAT have provided 2,100 hours of training to more than 35,000 students.

The aim of these talks is to explain to young people the social meaning of paying taxes and their relationship with public spending, as well as the damage that tax fraud causes to society as a whole.

By incorporating tax and civic education content into the school curriculum, the initiative hopes to encourage young people to develop a sense of civic responsibility. The three essays selected for this national writing contest incorporate these messages and demonstrate the need for an ethical correspondence between personal interests and common benefits in a democratic society.