Promoting voluntary compliance

• The Comprehensive Digital Administration will have more than 300 specialized officials to serve taxpayers throughout the national territory electronically
• The ADI offers a wider range of hours and avoids the need to travel to traditional offices, which will continue to provide face-to-face assistance as before.
• It will gradually deploy its information and assistance services, and will have four locations: Valencia, Madrid, Galicia and Andalusia
• The Valencia ADI is now in operation, focused on VAT, modules, census procedures and the most common customs procedures; and the one in Madrid, dedicated to certain IRPF controls
• Entrepreneurs starting their activity, self-employed and SMEs, landlords and tax professionals, main beneficiaries of a new complementary model of assistance to taxpayers

February 11, 2021 .- The Tax Agency has launched the new Comprehensive Digital Administration ('ADI'), a 'virtual counter' designed under the premise of facilitating voluntary compliance with more and better information and assistance to the taxpayer by a more agile, dynamic and closer Tax Administration.

In addition to the face-to-face assistance traditionally provided in physical offices, which will continue as before, more than 300 specialized officials from the ADI will be dedicated exclusively to providing personalized, non-face-to-face assistance to taxpayers throughout the country.

They will offer their assistance service to a wide group of potential beneficiaries – including entrepreneurs starting their business, self-employed workers and SMEs, landlords and tax professionals, as well as taxpayers who need assistance in processing tax procedures – with more flexible hours than conventional offices and avoiding unnecessary trips for citizens.

The creation of the ADI, one of the main projects of the Agency's Strategic Plan 2020-2023, arises from the possibility that new technologies offer today to combine the best of the two major traditional vectors of taxpayer assistance, which the ADI now complements: the usual face-to-face help and the quality online self-service alternative.

An integrated multi-channel system

Comprehensive Digital Administration will be multi-channel, going beyond the traditional concept of personalized assistance through call centers. To provide its service, it will rely on the various telematic tools offered by current technology, from virtual assistants to instant chats and video calls, as well as traditional telephone and 'click to call' (call button on the web), among other channels. The use of one or another tool, or several of them consecutively, will depend on each service and procedure, and the degree of electronic identification required in each case.

In addition, an integrated model of access to the services offered by the Tax Agency is also implemented, since the assistance offered by the ADI is integrated with the rest of the functionalities and procedures carried out by the Tax Administration.

Thus, a taxpayer who initially has a question regarding VAT, or who requests information about a notification received, can receive help from the ADI to submit a declaration or to respond to the Administration's request, solving the pending procedure of a only once and avoiding time and trips to the Agency's office, since the operation of a traditional physical counter is replicated remotely.

The advantages of the virtual counter

In addition to the ease and convenience of access for taxpayers who do not have to physically go to the office, the ADI offers extended hours, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., which doubles the time dedicated to customer service in physical offices.

Furthermore, by having specialized personnel exclusively dedicated to providing assistance, the homogeneity and quality of service to taxpayers is reinforced, which in turn favors the unity of criteria in the application of tax regulations and, therefore, legal certainty.

How does it work and what services does it provide?

The integration of the Comprehensive Digital Administration with the Agency's various procedures and services means that the taxpayer, in a wide variety of cases, will request help in response to a specific situation that is occurring live, at that moment.

This would be, for example, the case of a taxpayer who is experiencing difficulties in submitting a quarterly VAT return and is offered the possibility of helping him/her in the submission, or who has received a notification from the Agency that includes a telephone number for the case. that needs clarification.

Also the different existing virtual assistants in VAT and census matters will be an access channel to the ADI, in such a way that the system can detect difficulties (repetition of errors, or a prolonged time of use of the tool) and, automatically, The taxpayer receives an offer of help through the instant chat system.

The type of assistance is divided into two parts: information, for cases in which the taxpayer only needs to consult how a transaction is taxed, what procedure must be carried out in a certain case, etc.; and assistance in filing a declaration, or in responding to a procedure initiated by the Agency.

In the field of information, among other services, the ADI initially resolves doubts about VAT, registrations, modifications and cancellations of activity, and also about notifications that the taxpayer has received.

At the same time, in the field of assistance, the presentation of census returns, quarterly VAT returns for landlords and for self-employed workers and SMEs who start their activity, and quarterly taxpayers in modules and complementary personal income tax returns from previous years, as well as , in customs matters, simplified import declarations and returns of agricultural and professional diesel. Throughout this year, assistance will be extended to other services, such as help with filing supplementary income tax returns.

The ADI will also soon offer a new product, called 'Informa+', which consists of the taxpayer requesting a written response to their query, so that they can have legal certainty about the tax treatment of a particular economic operation they plan to carry out.

After the start in Valencia with information and assistance in VAT, modules, census procedures and the most common customs procedures; and in Madrid with certain IRPF controls, the Galicia headquarters will be incorporated throughout 2021, followed by the Andalusia headquarters in 2022. In any case, all ADI headquarters will have national jurisdiction.