New forums for communication on tax matters.

• Representatives of UPTA, ATA and UATAE will be members of the Self-Employed Workers Forum, while CEOE and Cepyme will participate in the SME Forum
• Two working groups are created within each forum, one dedicated to regulatory analysis and digitalization projects, and another to analyze and approve codes of good practice for both groups.
• The forums' objectives include reducing administrative burdens, improving legal certainty, promoting electronic administration and collaborating in the prevention and fight against fraud.

February 16, 2022 .- The Tax Agency and the main federations and associations of SMEs and self-employed workers have today established two forums to promote cooperative relations under the principles of transparency and mutual trust. The constitution ceremony was attended by the Secretary of State for Finance, Héctor Izquierdo, and the Director General of the Tax Agency, Jesús Gascón, as well as members of the forums representing self-employed workers and SMEs, and the Agency itself.

The Self-Employed Workers Forum will be attended by representatives of the Union of Self-Employed Professionals and Workers (UPTA), the National Federation of Self-Employed Workers Associations (ATA) and the Union of Self-Employed Workers and Entrepreneurs Associations (UATAE). The Small and Medium Enterprises Forum will also be attended by the Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations (CEOE) and the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (Cepyme). The forums will be chaired by the Director General of the Tax Agency and will also include the heads of the Management, Inspection, Collection and Information Technology departments, as well as the head of the Planning and Institutional Relations Service. 

The forums' objectives include reducing administrative burdens, disseminating the new facilities that the Agency is offering for compliance with tax obligations and promoting the use of electronic administration in the relations between self-employed workers and SMEs with the Tax Agency, all in favour of an improvement in the application of the tax system. Likewise, collaboration will be provided in the prevention and fight against tax fraud.

Digitalisation and Regulatory Analysis Working Group

In addition to these general objectives, two specific working groups are created within the forums. One of them will be dedicated to promoting the development of digitalisation projects for SMEs and self-employed workers, as well as to analysing their tax regimes to ensure their adaptation to the economic and business reality of these groups and the improvement of their legal security.

The digitalisation project aims to modernise the administrative management of SMEs and self-employed workers and facilitate compliance with their formal obligations through secure invoicing systems that, at the same time, would contribute to reducing fraud generated by so-called 'dual-use software'.

To eradicate these sales concealment programs, the 2021 'anti-fraud' law established measures that must now be completed by regulation with a minimum standard to be met in the manufacture, marketing and possession of this billing 'software'.

In this context, and in accordance with the provisions of Component 27 of the Recovery Plan, the Agency has already been holding meetings with representative organizations of SMEs and self-employed workers in order to analyze technical alternatives in the configuration of these programs, so that they not only allow compliance with the prohibition of 'dual-use software', but that the same product also offers possible comprehensive digital solutions for compliance with billing and registration obligations.

Code of good practice

The second working group will be dedicated to the development of two codes of good practice, one for self-employed workers and another specific for small and medium-sized enterprises, which can be signed by the associations and federations representing these groups, and which the self-employed workers and SMEs themselves who wish to do so can adhere to.

These codes will allow the parties, administration and entrepreneurs and professionals, to express their commitment to the voluntary fulfilment of tax obligations, for which the instruments of collaboration are reinforced with the aim of promoting legal certainty, the reduction of conflicts in the tax field, the services provided to self-employed workers and SMEs, the training to be offered to these groups and transparency and the prevention and fight against tax fraud and the underground economy.

This is a step forward in developing a model of cooperative relationship between the Agency and taxpayers, which has already resulted in the creation of a code of good tax practices in the Large Companies forum in 2010 and another specific one for associations and professional colleges in 2019.