Mess in the Tax Agency |

From these pages of Vozpópulihe told us Mercedes Serraller the mess that has been created in the Tax Agency and whose last consequence, for the moment, has been the termination and replacement of its director of the Human Resources Department. The issue is far from being irrelevant since the position has the status of general director of the Spanish public administration but, above all, due to the causes that have led to the replacement.

For some time now, Treasury inspectors have been, rightly, concerned about various circumstances that have been happening with and in the Agency. First was when the Government announced its intention to lower the requirements for entry into the Public Servicean inadmissible reduction in general because it is contrary to the principles of merit and capacity established by the Constitution and especially serious with regard to groups of officials whose work affects the taxpayers’ treasury. That the tax inspections suffered by Spanish citizens can be carried out by officials with insufficient technical preparation who have acquired their status in a process without requirements or guarantees, and who can acquire and lose their official status by decision of their superiors, constitutes an obvious danger. for the functional independence of the Treasury Inspection and, consequently, a step in the political implementation of the Tax Agency.

Shortly after, and in the course of a tax action, in principle quasi-routine, aimed at verifying the origin of the VAT refund requested by Soluciones de Gestión – a Victor de Aldama-, the acting inspector discovered the genesis of the mask fraud materialized through fraudulent purchases made by various ministries and several Autonomous Communities such as the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands. Once the report was delivered to his immediate superior, who was the representative of the AEAT of Aragon, she transferred it to the director of the Inspection Department who in turn sent it to the competent court. The Minister of Finance did not like the content of the report nor that it reached the court and, as a result of her displeasure, the Treasury immediately dismissed the aforementioned delegate and the aforementioned director. He could not do the same with the inspector who authored the report because he held a position obtained through a merit-based competition and was therefore not susceptible to free dismissal. The two sudden dismissals were clear evidence of the sectarianism of MJ Montero and its evident desire to exercise political control over the daily development of the functions carried out by the AEAT. I know first-hand the annoyance that the minister’s arbitrary decision caused among many of the Treasury inspectors.

Subsequently, the entity’s officials saw with anger that the Minister of Finance failed to comply with the obligatory duty of secrecy that is legally imposed on her by publicly revealing – before television cameras – tax data of an individual. It was an illegal use of legally protected data in order to harm a political rival. Verifying that the aforementioned obligation, for whose failure not a few of her colleagues have been severely punished, was not fulfilled by the minister herself provoked the more than justified anger of the inspectors, a state of mind that increased due to the absence of the corporate response that such a situation deserved. breaking of the Law.

The implementation of the agreement would mean the end of the tax model established in the Constitution, it would break equality and solidarity among Spaniards

More recently, the adoption of the agreement between the Socialist Party and ERC to cede to the Catalan Generalitat the management, collection and inspection of all taxes paid in Catalonia, an issue that implies the granting of the concerted system to Catalonia and, consequently, the disappearance of the state Tax Agency in said region. In addition to leaving the independence tsunami abandoned the 4,000 officials that the entity has there today, The implementation of the agreement would mean the end of the tax model established in the Constitution, it would break equality and solidarity among Spaniards, it would break the unity of the tax databases and it would negatively affect the effectiveness of the management of the state tax system. This has been denounced by the Professional Association of Tax Inspectors who, as I have been able to confirm, feel that an institution like the AEAT is being used as a political bargaining chip to obtain spaces of power.

And if all that has been exposed so far were not enough, the actions of the AEAT in the scandalous case of David Sanchezthe very brother of the President of the Government, has been the latest bomb that has ended up undermining the patience of the entity’s officials in general and the Treasury inspectors in particular. This is due to the set of irregularities present in the case, such as: 1) the incomprehensible inaction of the AEAT for verification for several years in the face of a more than suspicious tax expatriation; 2) the submission of a report at the request of the Court that is initially anomalously anonymous; 3) the subsequent confession, out of obligation, of an alleged authorship that is now attributed to three directors, a circumstance inexplicable due to its inadequacy and exceptional nature; and 4) the inconceivable content of the report, an incredible and cumbersome mass of irrelevant truisms, half-truths, malicious omissions and unfounded conclusions whose sole purpose is to exonerate Pedro Sánchez’s brother of the alleged crimes that he may have committed, administrative and possible. what penalties. The inspectors consider that they cannot accept without rebelling that the AEAT uses two measuring sticks so radically different: A severe fiscal surveillance applied to common taxpayers to detect and punish their non-compliance and the unprecedented collusion that is applied with those committed by another, coincidentally the brother of the President of the Government.

It is not surprising that the scenario described has caused a kind of revolt among the Treasury inspectors. And therein lies the explanation for the change that occurred in the AEAT management team.

The accumulation of the actions described has convinced the Treasury inspectors of the Government’s claim to Pedro Sanchez to turn the Tax Agency into an instrumental peduncle of its political-partisan action. They feel, and they are right, that the institution in which they work is losing the credibility it had.

It is not surprising that the scenario described has caused a kind of revolt among the Treasury inspectors. And therein lies the explanation for the change that occurred in the AEAT management team with which we began this article. A director has been dismissed from outside, outside the Public Treasury bodies, to replace her with a veteran Treasury inspector –Consuelo Sanchez– considered as a tough one among her colleagues, married to another Inspector –Luis Rubithe unfortunate judicial administrator of Atlético de Madrid – with the presumed objective that he manages to control the yard. But the patio is very turbulent and the toughness of the person appointed to control it is not the best attribute for the storm to subside. It would have been more effective to understand the causes of the revolt and try to eliminate them, but acting like this does not seem feasible with MJ Montero at the head of the Ministry, a reason that may explain why what has been chosen has been chosen. Wrong decision, if you want to solve a problem you have to go to its causes and not its consequences. It is almost a physical law and those who do not respect it run the risk of ending up falling. Of course, leaving the original problem remaining and possibly aggravated.