The Tax and Customs Administration is strengthening the role of its inspectors at street level and monitoring possible crimes involving cryptocurrencies
The Tax Office will this year focus its oversight activities on those assets that claim not to reside in Spain, on black payments in rehabilitation works and property reforms, and on possible tax fraud through cryptocurrencies.
This is according to the Tax and Customs Administration’s Annual Audit Plan, published Monday in the BOE, which sets out the Tax and Customs Administration’s priorities for the full year and will have one of its pillars in the supervision of assets that declare their income through the Income Tax for non-residents (IRNR).
This tax has lower tax rates than the personal income tax so that it is taxed only on the income generated within the country, rather than doing so on all of its worldwide income. “It has been found that a certain number of non-nationals choose to live in Spain, establish their habitual residence and remain there for more than 183 days of the calendar year, but as residents they do not begin to pay taxes on their worldwide income “But continue to do this, wrongly, through the IRNR only for the income obtained or generated in Spain,” the document explains.
The control plan also emphasizes the urgency of strengthening surveillance of those pretending to live in communities other than the real autonomous communities, with the aim of paying less taxes. In the same way, specific plans will be implemented on the indirect ownership of real estate by non-residents, in view of their proper wealth taxation.
Within the new annual audit plan and after the pandemic has stopped, the Treasury will strengthen the presence of inspectors on the streets through visits. These are the so-called “tax haircuts” that the IRS has been implementing for years, which, while targeting multiple sectors, will focus on real estate construction in 2023, particularly in terms of rehabilitation and reforms given the proliferation of payments in the dark or without VAT in the sector.
The plan will also strengthen research into the use of crypto-assets in the digital economy to identify assets whose origins may be related to criminal activity. “In this line, it will seek, within the framework of EU regulations, to obtain information about digital payments made through entities or applications whose headquarters and servers are located abroad,” the document adds.
Another novelty for this year are the new taxes – in principle temporarily – approved for banks, energy and large estates. Finally, the IRS will take over the powers of “levying, administering, verifying and collecting” from the first two, despite the fact that the Treasury has always emphasized that it is a “wealth benefit” of a public non-fiscal nature.
The aim of the new control plan is, among other things, to expose a part of the underground economy that annually reduces the final collection of the state treasury. Income, however, has strengthened significantly in recent years, largely thanks to the impact of high inflation on certain figures such as VAT, closely linked to consumption, or personal income tax.
As announced this Monday by the Secretary of State for Finance, Jesús Gascón, the fiscal year 2022 ended with an increase in tax revenues of about 15%, as planned, surpassing the first estimate of 244,000 million set in the General State by about 10,000 million exceeded Budgets (PGE).
Speaking to the Congressional Finance and Public Function Commission, Gascón explained that the predictable data for 2022 is obtained after a month of December in which tax revenues also increased by almost 15%. For the full year, the biggest boost came from VAT and income tax revenues, ranging from 13% to 14%. Corporate tax collections also increased by about 20%, in the absence of final data to be published in March.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
