Public Is the Tax Agency a terrorist organization? Other opinions More opinion columns Now on the front page
Laplace and Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And if "we are all Madame Bovary", I am sure that many workers, particularly self-employed workers and small businessmen, will see themselves reflected in what follows.
Go ahead, I am a strong advocate of paying taxes. It is a basic pillar of the welfare state and allows the redistribution necessary to attend to public services and the protection of the disadvantaged. I also believe that all taxpayers can be inspected to ensure that fraud does not occur.
Recently I received a notification from the Tax Agency. They tell me that they see a mismatch in my 2019 statement; what should be in one column is in another, but the sums match. They don't make me "a parallel". They do not say that he has committed any irregularity. The sum of what was declared coincides with the one that the Treasury has, to the cent. But that letter, which I don't quite understand, fills me with concern.
Anyone who has ever received a letter from the Treasury will know that notifications have three characteristics: they are opaque, threatening and unbalanced. The one I received has 8 pages. I pride myself on reading complex texts, but I didn't understand it at first reading. Only after I took it to an agency and they gave me keys to interpret what they told me and asked for and, of course, what they threatened me with, was I able to unravel it. I wonder what the hundreds of thousands of people who receive similar notifications are doing. Indeed, what I: take them to an agency.
Someone would say that if I prove my statement is correct I shouldn't worry. If there is no crime, there is no punishment. But, friend, friend, the Tax Agency does not stitch without a thread. Since he "observes" this imbalance, he takes the opportunity to ask me for all my accounting for 2019 to verify that it is in order. The Tax Agency wants a crime scene clean, even if there is no crime.
Notifications are mandatory. The Administration does not ask that "the taxpayer" clarify an alleged error. It warns that a tax management process is beginning and details a long list of regulations for which you can be subject to fines if you do not attend to it on time. But there is something more important, in bold: "The presentation by electronic means is the only possible if, in accordance with current regulations, you are obliged to interact with the Administrations by said means". This is called computer despotism. Not everyone has a computer, or why know how to use it by completing the abstruse declarations of the Treasury.
And I have said as a third quality that they are unbalanced. The Tax Agency grants ten days to respond, it does not matter if you have a job or headaches, if you went on vacation or if you care for a dying person. If it is not done within the requested period and format, disciplinary proceedings are initiated. Anyone who has been associated at any time with all kinds of administrations (local, regional, state, citizen protection, Social Security...) can imagine how this country would function if these administrations had to respond in detail and effectively to what "the taxpayers" we request... in ten days!
I can count myself lucky. I handle myself with relative ease when writing allegations. I can scan, because I have a scanner. I can answer by email, because I have a computer and internet. I even know how to use Excel and can index my invoices in a spreadsheet and set meta links. The notification informs me: "The Tax Agency makes available, in the technical information section of the IRPF portal, the formats in which the Books can be presented, www.agenciatributaria.es/AEAT.internet/IRPF.shtml." But I suggest you: try to use this link. They will be lost in a tangle of pages, recommendations and examples that are impossible to understand by a normal citizen. Will the model I choose match what is appropriate for my obligations in the indicated year? I run the risk of not. What is the solution? It is obvious: ask at an agency. Or better: give them all my files for processing. In short: I have to pay to prove that I have not committed a crime that has not occurred.
Anyone who has visited an agency this time will know that they are overwhelmed. The pandemic has left behind a trail of layoffs, you are, ertes, requests for minimum vital income, retirements... which are not enough because they all have to be processed electronically. In addition, the telephone lines of the Treasury or Social Security are blocked, even for managers. These work a lot, but they do well; Your health may suffer, but your businesses are in demand.
It doesn't matter if you're a widower with a small shop and trying to collect a pension; or a young man who decides to promote the agricultural exploitation of your grandfather; or a woman that you start a business as a ceramist; or a plumber that you work until exhaustion to support your family; or a philologist trying to get a little money as an English teacher, or a rider... It doesn't matter. If you want to be "legal" you will need an agency because the language and the rules of the Administration make us all incapable and inept citizens. This is linguistic despotism.
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The manager tries to console me: I am not a singular case; It processes dozens of similar requirements, with one excuse or another, aimed especially at professionals, the self-employed and small businessmen. They call it "fighting fraud."
2020 has impoverished us and the Treasury knows that this will be noticed in our next statements. For this reason, it has accelerated other collection mechanisms. The Tax Agency requests data. Tens or hundreds of thousands of taxpayers are asked to do so, whether or not they have committed violations. The excuses are varied.
This is not, as they want to sell us, "a fight against fraud". It is the closest thing to a phishing campaign, that criminal mechanism that consists of sending thousands of messages in the certainty that a percentage of the unsuspecting will fall for the deception. With it being small, it's already business. The Tax Agency sends dozens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of warning letters. Some cannot be attended to because "the taxpayer" has enough with a divorce or eviction process or mourning for the death of a family member. Others will be penalized for not complying with the obscure accounting standards that the Treasury dictates. In other cases, expenses that they consider justified will be reduced, even if they are necessary to carry out their business. And, yes, there will be some cases of fraud. But after this sweep, the Tax Agency will initiate proceedings for the honest and fraudsters, propose sanctions, impose fines, establish surcharges... For a small business owner or a self-employed worker there is always the risk of missing something, of getting confused. something, forget something among the hundreds or thousands of data that must be accounted for at the end of the year. For the Tax Agency, every taxpayer is a potential criminal who must be monitored, coerced and penalized; this is how it treats us in its notifications. All the notifications are scary. We all go to agencies to scare away past or future fears.
As I said, this is especially common in the case of freelancers and small business owners. Treasury needs money. Officials and employees can no longer be fleeced; they have fixed salaries, sometimes miserable, fixed hours and there are almost always union organizations that protect them. The only way to bleed them would be to raise VAT and other indirect taxes, and that is an unpopular measure. But the self-employed and professionals, if 20, 200 or 2,000 euros are deducted from them through this phishing, they will always find time and energy to make up for that tear and not close their activity. Either that or death. If in the previous exercise you paid 2,700 euros, why not 3,000 or 4,000? Even if there are no errors or irregularities, the Treasury can always say: "Those insulating boots, the dinner you made 300 km from your house, the calculator or the van you bought were not essential, so I do not consider them deductible. I cancel them. , I'll raise your quota and I'll impose a penalty for trying to cheat me. Come on, don't be angry, work a little more next year." The mechanism is that simple and that is how it is being used massively. Perhaps that is why "entrepreneurship" is so encouraged. For the Tax Agency, for unscrupulous rulers, any self-employed worker or small business owner is a bargain, a well from which you can always extract a little more water. That, they say, is the "fight against fraud": collecting millions of euros by reviewing the returns of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers, at retail... From here 100, from here 500, from there 700... Such a review is done without a hearing from or to the taxpayer, without having the opportunity to argue or defend herself. This is administrative despotism.
But there is more, much more terrifying still, and it is no longer about money. Those massive letters from the Tax Agency, symbolically covered with a black curtain, are weapons with which to sow fear. They are carpet bombings carried out on entire groups, and not selective attacks on the heart of the fraud. All of yours is in full view of Big Brother, which is the Tax Agency. Once you gave him your data and your metadata. It knows where you live, what your current account is, and it has the necessary mechanisms to take what it considers. If you consider it unfair, be prepared to spend money, time and health on resources that will not stop the collection. Now you will not only need managers, but lawyers and solicitors. The Treasury knows how to threaten you and take away your sleep. This is economic despotism, pure coercion. It won't help you if you don't make ends meet, if you have a treasury problem, if the Administration itself is late in paying and that puts your company at risk, if you want to innovate or need professional assistance. That is not your job; for all that you must pay. The Tax Agency scares you, admit it. It watches over you and whether you try to deceive it or make a mistake, it can fleece you; it can ruin your job, your dream, your life and that of your family. Remember: the cards have a black curtain. Nothing is random.
I call that terrorism, as defined by the RAE in its first meaning: "domination by terror". Those of us who can read this have come out of a pandemic alive, but the bad is yet to come. We can already see what is happening with the prices of electricity, and that is not talking about the rise in fuel or basic necessities. The Treasury needs money and knows how to extract it massively using this phishing technique. He knows exactly where the big pockets of tax fraud are, he knows about capital evasion, he knows about sicavs, he knows about illegal commissions, he knows where the huge amounts of money that come from human trafficking, drugs or of forced prostitution. But big companies and certain obscure characters are protected by prestigious and very expensive consultancies to which you will never have access. How curious that former presidents, former ministers and many other politicians end up in their law firms and boards of directors, earning astronomical salaries. How curious.
We are in the middle of the income declaration campaign. Declaring is essential. Control fraud, too. The pandemic has individualized us, it has fragmented us. For months it has not been possible to visit a public office to file a claim or make a request and I fear that these practices are here to stay. Everything has been done through the internet, reinforcing computer despotism. Communications are issued without taking care that they are intelligible by the citizen, reinforcing linguistic despotism. There is no possibility of claiming except by paying managers, lawyers or solicitors, strengthening administrative despotism. The great pillars of the supposed welfare state, such as the Treasury or Social Security, have found in telematics the ideal tool to control, threaten and sanction, through economic despotism. A terrifying combination that creates the perfect Big Brother, in which each citizen is a mere ID number, NAFSS, NIF, CIF...
The Tax Agency asks for my information even if I have not committed a crime. You have the right and you can do it, as with many thousands. If I give them to you, you won't give me an audience, I won't be able to plead, I won't have the right to defend myself. Someone who does not know the conditions of my work will make decisions about my expenses. A machine will issue a document. Most likely, it is a mandatory letter of payment, because I am a self-employed person who can bleed something else. I will be granted the right to appeal, but the cost of the process may exceed the debt, and if it were to rule in my favor, it would be years from now and not worth it. Like thousands of taxpayers, I'll hang my head, gnash my teeth, and eventually pay up. I will work a little more next year. And since they will take money from me, I will feel a little more afraid.
It's hard to resist Big Brother, harder and harder. Only the powerful can do it.
Or not...? Not long ago, Antonio Fraguas "Forges" and Javier Reverte, among others, launched a fight against the Tax Agency that they ended up winning. They tried to get the Treasury to allow the compatibility between the retirement pension and the collection of their copyrights, something that in the rest of Europe is considered obvious but that in Spain was limited by the inveterate obstruction and punishment of culture. After years of lawsuits, they ended up winning. I can imagine their worries, their insomnia, their disappointments, the expenses of solicitors and lawyers that they had to face for almost five years against the threats from the Treasury. They won, but they died relatively young, and it makes me shudder to think that the IRS might have taken weeks or months off their years.
Do I accept phishing? Do I fatten the Beast? Do I feed terror?
It is not only an economic dilemma, but also a moral one.
Almost done. I am 67 years old. I have made statements to the Treasury without interruption since 1978. I have contributed to Social Security without interruption for 42 years and 142 days. Since May 2019, the year for which they ask me for (more) accounts, and in which I retired, Social Security has kept my contributory pension reduced from 802 euros to 50%, in breach of RD 302/2019 that Forges and Reverte obtained . Until January 2021, the Administration owes me 11,262.54 euros and I have no expectation of collection; After several claims, they have not responded to me. I don't know if the Ministry of Culture has moved a finger to know if that RD is being fulfilled or not. Gentlemen of the Tax Agency, I feel like telling you what Labordeta said one day in Congress.
I will be penalized. But if I just folded, if I kept quiet, I would betray the memory of Reverte and Forges. I would forget the thousands of culture workers condemned to live with crappy pensions. I would ignore the problems of "entrepreneurs", like my own daughter. And he would lose the respect of the thousands of retirees who in streets like those of Bilbao clamor for decent pensions. Enough of despotic neoliberalism! It is essential to contribute and control, but not like this, not like this.
(I'm going to get to the 2020 statement. I'll keep telling you…)