The fictitious fiscal relocations decrease but the amounts raised increase. Last year, the Catalan Tax Agency (ATC) detected 24 taxpayers compared to 45 the previous year. Instead, the amounts raised by these fraudulent address changes increased to 49.5 million euros compared to 29 million last year.
The Secretary of Hisenda of the Generalitat, Marta Espasa, has reflected today after presenting the data of the inspection performance that “there are fewer and fewer relocations to other communities”, In her opinion, “the tax on large fortunes reduces the incentive” . In the opinion of the Minister for the Economy, Natàlia Mas, there is no flight of taxpayers to other low-tax communities: “as regards Catalonia, we do not notice that it has a significant impact”. What cannot be known is how collection would evolve if there were no downward tax policy in autonomous regions such as Madrid, where the wealth tax has been abolished by subsidizing it at 100%.
In the 2019-2022 period, the collection from fictitious changes of residence abroad (113 million euros) multiplies by 11 what is recovered from false transfers of residence to other communities (11 million).
The Agency surfaced last year tax fraud for 294 million euros in 2022, which represents a decrease of 13.27% compared to 2021, when a record was broken, with 339 million, due to various extraordinary factors.
Between 2019 and 2022, the ATC recovered a total of 1,055 million euros.
For taxes, the ATC revealed 103 million of tax fraud in the Inheritance and Donations Tax (-29.45% compared to 2021), another 100 million in the Wealth Tax (-1%), 84 million in the Property Transfers and Documented Legal Acts (-3.44%), 5 million in gambling tax (66%) and 2 million in other own taxes, the same amount as in 2021.
Of the 1,055 million raised between 2019 and 2022, a total 39.4% of tax fraud came from Inheritance and Gift Tax (416 million), and was followed by Wealth Tax (329 million), which accounted for 31.2%. of the total, and that of Patrimonial Transfers and Documented Legal Acts (289 million), which contributed 27.4%, and the rest of own taxes barely generated 2% of the total, that is, 6 million.
On the other hand, the Generalitat has designed a new tax fraud reduction plan for the period 2023-2026 that includes 70 measures, 22 of them new and seven areas of action.
