Never, not even during the process, had the Agència Tributària de Catalunya (ATC) attracted so much attention from public scrutiny. After ERC made it the protagonist of the agreement for the investiture of Salvador Illa, the new Government needs to transform it to turn it into an organization capable of meeting the most complicated challenge of the legislature: that Catalonia has its own financing model the one who collects all the taxes.
The Minister of Economy, Alicia Romero, began the race from day one to comply with a calendar that is the result of an agreement and, therefore, would not be the one that the Department had designed by itself. According to the agreement with ERC, the ATC must be able to manage all the 2025 personal income tax (which is collected a year later). It will be the first challenge and the litmus test of the Government’s commitment to new financing.
Despite the difficulties, the Government is convinced that in the period of just over a year at their disposal they will be able to strengthen the body, currently very underdeveloped, to turn it into a tax agency worthy of the name.
In the first 100 days of his mandate, Romero has already made the two decisions that kick off the most difficult obstacle test of the Illa administration. Last October he formed the group of seven experts that will guide the Generalitat in matters of financing and tax management, at the head of which he placed Martí Carnicer, an expert who was already Secretary General of the Economy under the orders of Antoni Castells during the Tripartit , between 2003 and 2010.
The second decision came this week when, as La Vanguardia reported, the Catalan administration and the Ministry of Finance have formed a bilateral table to study the formulas with which to grow the ATC at a rapid pace.
Almost at the same time, this Tuesday, the Government took another important step when it appointed Andreu Navas as director of the ATC. Navas is a technician who has just led the inspectorate body of the Provincial Council of Tarragona and who has extensive training and experience in the tax field.
Collection by stages and expansion of ATC
Catalonia is one of the most complex tax territories in the State, according to AIReF studies. Not only is it the second community with the most taxpayers (17.4%, only surpassed by half a point by Andalusia). It is also the second one that has the most citizens with incomes in the highest bracket. Specifically, 3,365 Catalans declared more than 600,000 euros in the last financial year. And, if that were not enough, it is a community that has higher tax rates.
In this scenario, Catalonia needs to deploy a very effective tax agency from the first moment it begins to act. An objective that can only be met through the transfer of personnel and resources from the ministry to the regional administration.
According to the calculations handled by the Government, the body that Andreu Navás will direct would need to have at least the same number of employees that the Treasury has in Catalonia at the moment, that is, between 4,000 and 5,000. A figure that contrasts with the personnel who now work at ATC, 855 people in total. If at the time Illa had calculated that they needed to multiply the current structure by four, the new estimates even raise that figure.
The preferred formula for this type of transfer is the one already being used in Rodalies to establish the new Catalan public company integrating personnel from Renfe: the agreement between both structures.
Both in the case of the railways and the Treasury technicians, the circumstance is that a good part of the staff originates from outside Catalonia, which is why they aspire to return after a few years in Barcelona. Losing the right to mobility is usually, as union sources explain, the main reluctance of these workers to become workers of the Catalan administration, although the state administration is also usually preferred due to salaries and incentives.
Thus, Navas will need to deploy his best seduction skills – in the form of labor rights – to convince a high percentage of Treasury workers to choose to join an ATC that is still starved of resources. And, furthermore, the Tarragona native will have to do so while being subject to a complicated calendar that, as has already been noted, begins in the second quarter of 2026, but that will become more complicated as progress is made in managing all the taxes.
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