The tax fraud revealed by the Agència Tributària de Catalunya (ATC) due to fictitious relocations, those who pretend to live abroad or in other communities, such as Madrid, to pay less taxes, made it possible to collect 12 million euros in 2023, 75% less than in 2022, when 49 million emerged. This drop, among other aspects, is one of the factors that caused the ATC to slightly reduce the total volume of tax fraud discovered that year in 2023, which was 286 million, compared to 294 million in 2022, which represents a decrease of 2.7%.
The Department of Economy of the Generalitat took stock this Thursday of its actions to fight against tax fraud in 2023, an exercise in which the ATC, the so-called Catalan Treasury, carried out 54,544 actions, 7% more, through of its areas of inspection, management and collection of the agency’s taxes.
Regarding fictitious relocations, last year the ATC discovered 27 cases of changes of fictitious tax domicile: 15 to other communities (mainly to the Community of Madrid) and another 12 abroad (basically to Andorra), and all of these liquidations reported a total collection of 12 million.
In 2022, the ATC carried out 24 settlements for cases of fictitious tax relocations, which raised 49.41 million euros; Specifically, it uncovered 14 cases of fictitious relocations abroad for 44.95 million euros and another 10 cases of fictitious relocations to other autonomous communities, with which 4.45 million more were revealed.
The Secretary of Finance of the Generalitat, Marta Espasa, has explained that the decrease in fraud that has surfaced in this way is explained by a set of factors.
“Although the actions have increased, sometimes you draw up minutes and find very exceptional amounts and sometimes the amount is lower,” said Espasa, who has also argued that, when cases of this type are discovered, other people tend to act preventively to regularize their situation or that the discovered people avoid repeat offending, and all this in a context of increasingly greater international exchange of tax information.
On the other hand, the amount of fraud discovered for assets located abroad also decreased in 2023, that is, for cases of taxpayers who do not declare assets and rights they possess abroad.
In 2023 there were 18 settlements for this type of fraud that contributed 1.6 million, while in 2022 24 cases were detected for an amount of 10.8 million, which implies a drop of 85%.
Since the tax fraud prevention and reduction plan was launched in 2015, the ATC has discovered a total of 2,081 million euros, and the record of fraud revealed was broken in 2021, with 338 million.
In 2023, the Inheritance and Donation Tax accounted for 42% of the fraud discovered, with 121 million, compared to the 103 million revealed in 2022.
Second place was occupied by the Tax on Property Transfers and Documented Legal Acts, with 84 million (29% of the total), the same amount as in 2022.
The third most important tax in terms of tax fraud was the Wealth Tax, which contributed 76 million, 27% of the total, compared to the 100 million raised in 2022.
On the other hand, last year 3 million tax fraud was detected in the gambling tax and another 2 million between own and other taxes.
The acting Minister of Economy, Natàlia Mas, assured in the press conference that it is “difficult to quantify the magnitude of tax fraud”, although some studies place it “between 15 or 20%” of the total tax collection. , and has warned that if action is not taken to solve this problem, the legitimacy of public administrations may be questioned.
But he recalled that the Generalitat only has powers to surface tax fraud on its own taxes and on part of the transferred taxes, that is, on a tenth of all the taxes generated in Catalonia.
On the other hand, the ATC has increased the number of qualified personnel to apply taxes by 12% in 2023 and the interim employment has been cut by 23%.
