The Tax Agency’s objectives for combating tax fraud have already been set for 2023 and published in the Official State Gazette of 27 February. Among them, and as sectors or profiles of taxpayers to be prioritised are the activity of housing refurbishment, changes of tax residence, false residences in countries and autonomous regions with low taxation, as well as cryptocurrencies.
The construction sector, historically considered to be one of the sectors with the highest rate of tax fraud in Spain, and especially housing renovation, which is booming after the pandemic, also favoured by various incentives under the Recovery Plan approved by the Government, is one of the sectors on which the Tax Administration is going to focus its attention.
The Tax Administration also plans to have more human and technical resources to detect the existence of addresses for the simple receipt of correspondence or false tax domiciles to give the appearance of real activity to “ghost” companies. This measure will help to clean up the business register as well as to avoid tax fraud. To this end, the tax administration is making use of big data.which is extremely useful for cross-checking data from other sources (supply companies, mobile phone usage, fines, internet advertisements, etc.) leading to the collection of tax debts, as well as data exchange with other tax administrations to identify international structures aimed at lowering your tax bill.
In the same way, priority will be given to the monitoring of citizens resident in Spain who incorrectly declare their taxes as Non-Residents in order to apply certain tax advantages such as being taxed only on income generated in Spain and at lower rates than would be applicable if they were taxed as residents in Spain.
On the other hand, the aim is to control the correct taxation of cryptocurrencies in personal income tax and to identify the origin of assets that may be linked to criminal activities and that are associated with the use of cryptoassets. In addition, the intervention of these assets by means of seizure will be strengthened to settle possible tax debts.
While the aforementioned taxpayer profiles will be one of the priorities of the Tax Administration’s inspection activities, it will continue to pursue other conducts that have already been audited in the past, such as VAT fraud schemes, personal expenses charged to companies, the issuing of false invoices, virtual payments (Bizum, etc.) and the use of dual-use software that allows B-accounting.
Samir Haddad