"Give your opinion on the following statement: in the management and inspection processes of the Tax Agency, collection criteria predominate over tax justice criteria." Answer: 0.2% strongly disagree; 1.5% disagree; 25.8% agree; and 71.7% strongly agree. Result: an overwhelming 96% of tax advisors in Spain, consider that, indeed, in the Treasury weighs more the desire to collect than objectivity.

It is one of the conclusions of the survey that the Registry of Tax Advisor Economists (REAF) has carried out among its associates, and that it published yesterday. "Tax advisory professionals continue to think that tax administrations are increasingly tightening their tax application procedures and that, in their actions, collection criteria prevail," the body dependent on the General Council of Economists clearly states at this point.

This perception and conviction is also key in the negative assessment that advisors make of the tax system as a whole. The work shows that more than 50% of respondents consider that the current configuration of the tax system is worse than five years ago. 58.1%, specifically, while the figure in 2020 was 43.1%. The increase is very significant.

"A large majority of respondents consider that the current Spanish tax system is worse than the past, whether a more recent past is taken as a reference [5 years] or further away in time [up to 20 years]," says the REAF in the conclusions of the work. The negative perception is accentuated in each new wave, which shows that "the tax system is not going in the right direction," he adds.

And another very revealing point of the work, and that is directly related to that bad perception, is that the tax system is very complex even for advisors. That even they are not able to unravel, understand and properly interpret certain aspects. More than 90% of respondents indicate that there is an excessive regulatory modification, and that this produces legal uncertainty.

The latest taxes created by the Government are an example of this. The figures on energy companies and banking, as well as the tax on large fortunes are going to be the subject of lawsuits by those affected. In fact, they already are. But in the meantime, the advisers anticipate that, in the specific case of the tax on the rich, it will have direct consequences in terms of relocation. "It will limit changes of tax residence between autonomous communities," which is something that the Ministry of Finance sought when approving the measure. At the same time, however, more than 70% of respondents say that "it will encourage the transfer of taxpayers abroad", with the corresponding loss of revenue.

But there are more examples of the difficulty of the tax system, and that are also much closer for the majority of citizens. The practical manual on personal income tax that the Tax Agency makes available to citizens has 1,666 pages in its downloadable version in PDF. A tax paid by more than 20 million taxpayers and which, therefore, should tend towards greater simplification. The reality is that among the experts themselves there are situations in which they do not know what is in force and what is not.

On the specific characteristics of the survey and how it has been carried out, the REAF explains that it has received a total of 547 responses. "This represents a response rate of 11.5% and a representativeness of the universe of associates of 11.1%. From these data, we conclude that the margin of error of the answers is +/- 3.9% with a confidence level of 95%. In short, the representativeness of the results at the national level is guaranteed," says the organization.

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