The Inspection Area settled 10.7% more debt, with the Central Delegation of Large Taxpayers accounting for almost 50% of the settlements.

In 2023, the Tax Agency carried out a total of 44,776 inspection control actions related to large companies, significant assets, abuses of corporate forms and the fight against the underground economy, 13.7% more than the previous year. Within these actions, which consume highly qualified resources, 34,487 actions were carried out on multinationals, corporate groups and companies with an annual turnover of more than six million euros (+17.3%).

Included in these more than 44,000 outstanding actions are also 3,031 of asset and corporate analysis (+2%), 5,812 related to abuses of corporate forms and concealment of activity (+3.9%) and 1,446 with hidden sales discovered in economic activities (+2.8%).

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In 2023, the Tax Agency carried out more than 44,700 control actions on large companies, significant assets and the underground economy

These actions form part of the control activity carried out by the Tax Agency last year, which concluded with 16,708 million euros of collection linked to its work in the prevention and fight against fraud after more than 1,898,000 internal tax control actions, in line with the previous year.

In the Inspection Area, 10.7% more debt was settled, with the Central Office for Large Taxpayers accounting for almost 50% of the settlements. Reductions were also made in negative tax bases, deductions pending application and quotas to be offset, amounting to 3,356 million euros, actions of great importance to widen future tax bases and increase tax collection.

Broadening of tax bases in multinationals
With the same objective of broadening tax bases, in 2023 the National International Taxation Office (ONFI) participated in the management of 54 Preliminary Valuation Agreements (APAs) with a favourable result in the international taxation of multinationals, which means guaranteeing future tax bases for an amount of 3,578 million euros, 31.9% more than the previous year.

In turn, and also in the area of international taxation of large multinational companies, last year the Tax Agency regularised taxable bases for an amount of 2,925 million euros in a total of 87 tax audits carried out by the Central Delegation of Large Taxpayers and the other delegations of the Agency with the support of the ONFI.

Control based on foreign information and investigation
On the other hand, the inspection control over taxpayers for whom information on financial accounts abroad has been received through the European ‘DAC2’ directive, the OECD’s CRS standard and the ‘Fatca’ agreement with the USA allowed for the settlement of 251 million euros (24.8% more) to 602 taxpayers, so that since 2017, the year in which this information began to be received, the Agency’s Inspection area has already settled more than 1,200 million to more than 3,300 taxpayers.

In turn, and within the annual activity of the National Fraud Investigation Office (ONIF) of the Inspection Department, the preparation of the ‘FITT’ files (Fichas de Información con Trascendencia Tributaria), which the Office sends to the different Tax Agency delegations for the possible regularisation of tax contingencies, is particularly noteworthy. Last year, the ONIF sent 416 FITT files for analysis. In turn, those sent in recent years meant that in 2023 the Agency’s delegations settled a total of 501 million euros for 420 taxpayers.

Large estates
Also last year, the Agency carried out 999 control actions on the large estates of individuals from its different delegations, which led to the liquidation of debts amounting to 502 million euros, in line with previous years. In addition to supporting these settlements, the Central Unit for the Coordination of the Control of Significant Assets has been promoting various projects to further strengthen and update the control systems in this area. Among them is the tool to facilitate the detection of false non-residents with significant assets, which in 2023 has facilitated the settlement of 27.7 million euros on 136 taxpayers artificially located in other countries, and for whom it has been determined that they had effective residence in Spain.

Submerged economy
In the area of control aimed at uncovering hidden economic activity, last year the Agency carried out 2,317 inspections under different verification programmes (the aforementioned 1,446 in the control of economic activities, and the rest in other programmes) in which it discovered hidden sales, regularising quotas for an amount of 466 million euros, 7.1% more than the previous year.

156 million, an increase of 27.9%, were paid to more than 1,200 taxpayers who had previously been subject to entry and search operations with the support of the IT Audit Units, the IAUs. These units participated last year in more than 1,500 actions with computer dumps that facilitate the discovery of hidden income, improve the gathering of evidence and reduce the duration of the checks.

Inspections in the field of the fight against the underground economy are complemented by the visits plan. In 2023, the Agency carried out more than 29,600 on-site inspections (‘peinados’) to carry out on-the-spot checks in sectors and areas of tax risk. Among these actions are more than 8,100 of the ‘VAT Visits Plan’ and almost 1,500 complementary visits of the sectorial macro-operations.