The Recent Resolution of February 22, 2016, of the General Directorate of the State Tax Administration Agency, approving the general guidelines of the Annual Tax and Customs Control Plan of 2016, aims to promote the actions of the Tax Agency in order to increase the prevention and fight against tax fraud as fundamental strategic objectives of the Tax Agency.

Mainly in the Resolution the sectors or typologies of fraud in which the Tax Agency will focus its attention are defined, the control systems of the effective collection of those subjects with tax debts and the increase in cooperation between the Tax Agency and the Tax Administrations of the Autonomous Communities.

Control Tributario y Aduanero

Sectors or types of fraud on which the Tax Agency will focus its attention in 2016

1 > Underground economy

The following lines of action will be developed to combat the underground economy:

a) Actions to capture and exploit information

  • Controlling those businesses of the so-called “concealment software” consisting of the use of specific computer programs and tools for the concealment of sales and manipulation of accounting.
  • Detection of the express and deliberate will to defraud the Public Treasury by under-declaration of sales with respect to actual billing levels.
  • Increase the number of people at the headquarters to detect these situations, through actions aimed at carrying out conventional inspection checks and carrying out formal verifications in certain sectors.
  • Monitor the actions that are carried out especially in economic sectors that are intensive in the handling of cash, either because they make direct sales to final consumers, or because they are part of wholesale distribution chains for other obligated that sell to the public.

b) Increase in the systems of actions of collection and exploitation of information:

Through the close action of the National Fraud Investigation Office, the transfer of cross-information between the different databases of the different Public Administrations and the study of all transfers of real estate will be promoted to contrast their consistency with the declarations submitted to the Tax Agency, as well as the execution of joint activities between the Tax Agency and the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate.

c) Face-to-face actions:

  • Enhancing effective actions in support of computer audits and verification of management programs.
  • Verifying the census situation of taxpayers in the visits.
  • Actions in the services sector focused on the discovery of hidden activities and incomes in businesses that totally or partially participate in the underground economy
  • Monitor the subjects who opaquely cede totally or partially homes online or other means.
  • Control of those regular tourism companies that do not duly comply with their tax obligations. Likewise, face-to-face actions will be carried out for the detection of undclared irregular rentals.
  • Coordination at the national level to combat irregular retail practices using concealment techniques.
  • Limitation of cash payments.
  • Increase actions in the field of the import of goods, both in the real margins of the activity within the framework of the VAT declaration system to indications of fraudulent actions both in the import process and subsequent distribution.
  • Control of products subject to Excise Duty

2 > Research on assets and income abroad

Investigating all the deviations of incomes abroad as well as the concealment of assets abroad, through opaque structures.

Increase in international cooperation, highlighting the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act that will allow the automatic exchange of financial account information with the United States of America to be effectively developed in 2016.

3 > International tax planning

Spain has actively participated in the development of the 15 lines of action of the Action Plan in which the BEPS Project (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) of the OECD and G20 countries was concretized.

Some of the actions aimed at the prevention of international tax fraud through:

  • Control of the operations of taxpayers with tax residence in Spain who use hybrid instruments or structures, or other aggressive tax planning instruments.
  • Surveillance in cases of acquisition of shares with leverage, mainly when it is proven that the operation has as its main purpose to generate financial expenses.
  • Control of operations carried out with territories of advantageous taxation, especially in relation to the verification of the taxation of operations carried out with persons or entities resident in tax havens
  • Monitoring and control of conduit companies (companies interposed to obtain the benefits of an Agreement).
  • Analysis of permanent establishments based in Spain for those taxpayers who are taxed as non-residents without a permanent establishment, especially multinational groups with a presence in Spain.
  • Verification of activities carried out in Spain by non-residents
  • Transfer pricing control of complex corporate restructuring operations.
  • Enhance international cooperation.

4 > Digital economy

  • Risk analysis of e-commerce operators
  • Capture of information on the Internet about risk operators, on issues such as the names of the domains used by each company and the indicators of the advertiser status of taxpayers.
  • Analysis of social networks and detection of fraud patterns.
  • Checking of companies that offer services on the internet by the affiliate marketing system.

5 > Provision of high-value services

The selection of taxpayers who from external signs of wealth will be enhanced in cases in which these signs are not in accordance with their history of pre-existing income or wealth statements

6 > Organized VAT fraud

  • Control of those structures organized of fraud, it is considered of vital importance to provide continuity to the detection and regularization of those fraudulent operations aimed at hindering the demand of tax responsibilities to the owners of the companies.
  • Avoid the appearance of schemes in tax fraud systems in intra-community operations.
  • Control over tax warehouses and warehouses other than customs warehouses for the purpose of tax evasion
  • Detection of schemes of massive purchases of companies by symbolic prices.
  • Control in the reimbursement of input VAT on purchases of goods made by non-resident travellers

7 > Control over transactions, legal-tax regimes, tax obligors and sectors of specific activity

Mainly, large companies covered by the regime of deferral of VAT quotas on imports or the consolidated taxation regime of tax groups will be controlled, as well as those taxpayers in the regime of objective estimation of personal income tax, and foundations and non-profit entities in order to avoid cases of abusive use of the special tax regime.

8 > Control of products subject to Excise Duty

Controls will be strengthened in the field of Excise Duties on Manufacturing, Electricity and Coal, as well as control over the validity of the authorizations of the establishments.

9 > Control of environmental taxes

Controls will be established in the field of the tax on Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases, Tax on the Value of the Production of Electric Energy, Taxes on the production of nuclear fuel, waste and storage.

10 > Customs control

The new Union Customs Code (UCC) will apply from 1 May 2016. The new legal framework incorporates numerous simplifications and establishes new requirements for the authorizations of the different customs figures.

11 > Prevention and repression of smuggling, drug trafficking and money laundering

The Tax Agency will aim not only to discover and intercept the goods but mainly to dismantle logistically and financially the organized networks.

Fraud control in the collection phase

  • Ensuring the effective collection of debts
  • Promotion of civil or criminal judicial actions against actions that prevent the payment of tax debts.
  • Action against complex frauds with the increase of a greater number of patrimonial emptyings, promoting the possible entry into prison of the taxpayer.
  • Improvement of average debt management times.
  • Differentiated monitoring of the precautionary measures adopted on assets and rights of the taxpayer.
  • Transformation of the figure of the postponement or fractionation of debts so that it has an exceptional character.

Collaboration between the Tax Agency and the Tax Administrations of the Autonomous Communities

In general, the exchanges of information on the most relevant census data of the taxpayers will continue through the Single Shared Census, a consolidated database of census information obtained by the regional and state Tax Administrations.

In particular, coordinated planning and cooperation will be increased in:

  1. Global control of the deductions on the autonomous section of the Personal Income Tax.
  2. Wealth tax corresponding to non-prescribed years.
  3. Significant real estate transactions.
  4. Most relevant corporate transactions declared exempt from the Tax on Patrimonial Transmissions and Documented Legal Acts.
  5. Compliance with the requirements to enjoy certain tax benefits in the Inheritance and Gift Tax.
  6. Compliance with the requirements for the application of the tax regime of the
  7. Declared addresses and their modifications.