Wholesale suppliers and service stations celebrate that some parliamentary groups have proposed guaranteeing the Administration the payment of VAT before fuel can be extracted from the tank. A measure that they believe can be effective in fighting fraudulent practices in distribution.
The debate occurs within the framework of the processing as a bill of Royal Decree-Law 8/2023, which adopts measures to address the economic and social consequences derived from the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as to alleviate the effects of drought. In the drafting of the royal decree, the Executive recognizes that “increasing fraudulent practices have been detected in the liquid hydrocarbons sector.”
The associations AEVECAR, AOP, CEEES and UPI welcome the fact that the regulation has incorporated measures that contribute to combating some fraudulent practices, but they emphasize that they are “insufficient”, since they do not address, for example, tax fraud in VAT. In this sense, they see it as “essential” that, before the fuel leaves the fiscal warehouses where it is stored, payment of the VAT corresponding to the subsequent sale of the product is guaranteed. “The guarantee may consist of either presenting some type of guarantee or demonstrating that it is a reliable operator,” they propose.
In this way, they consider that the options that currently allow fraudulent operators not to pay VAT into the public coffers are limited, while providing legal security to all links in the chain, “who will always be certain that their suppliers comply with their tax obligations,” they argue. For all these reasons, they support the proposal to modify the VAT law to prevent “fraudulent” operators from buying fuel in a fiscal warehouse, with tax exemption, and then selling them with the impact of VAT that will never be collected by the Treasury.
Finally, they remember that Italy solved the situation by applying a similar measure. Among the plaintiff associations are the Spanish Group of Fuel and Fuel Retail Sellers (AEVECAR), the Spanish Confederation of Service Station Entrepreneurs (CEEES), the Spanish Association of Petroleum Products Operators (AOP) and Independent Operators of the Energy Sector (UPI).