Page 9 - Tax Tribune

1. What was the most successful or most remarkable project implemented in your
tax administration in the past 20 years?

Since its creation in 1992, the Spanish Tax Agency adopted a strategic decision of
intensive usage of new information and communication technologies, which has led
us to create a real e-government, our most outstanding project as the main channel
to interact with taxpayers. It is based on an internet informative portal, launched in
1996, and an electronic office that allows formalities, consultation of the status of
procedures and obtaining copies of documents. In order to access these services,
taxpayers may use different identification systems (electronic certificate, electronic
identity card, Cl@vePIN) all of them complying with rigorous standards of
information security.

Nowadays, our flagship electronic service is the application “Renta web” (web PIT)
which helps prepare and submit electronically the Personal Income Tax return, the
main tax managed by the Spanish Tax Agency (in 2015 more than 19,4 million
returns). This is the reason why assistance in PIT has been improving steadily, for
example with the aid software “PADRE”, the pre-populated returns and as a last
milestone the “Renta web” application, which unifies both programmes (PADRE and
pre-populated return) in a simple and single web application adapted for
smartphones.

2. What was the most successful achievement, result in the past 20 years?

The Spanish Tax Agency´s most successful achievement has been to reach a high
level of efficiency in managing taxes since, according to the OECD report “Tax
Administration Series”, we fulfill our objectives of collecting public revenue,
promoting voluntary compliance and tackling tax fraud at a low cost in comparative
terms. This has been achieved by means of a model of austere tax administration
based on an intensive use of information and communication technologies (e-
government) and a moderate size of staff composed of specialised tax officials
adequately organised in order to maximise the results.

The steady increase of the Spanish Tax Agency´s results in terms of collected tax
revenue in the fight against tax and customs fraud shows the efficiency of this
model. It has allowed us to achieve historic results in recent years (more than 50,000
million € in the period 2012-2015) despite the downsizing of staff as a consequence
of the processes of fiscal adjustment.

As a conclusion, this model has allowed the Spanish Tax Agency to comply with its
objectives efficiently and to stay at the forefront in the trends that international
organisations point out on the functioning of tax administrations.

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