Justice has forced the State to return 22,000 million raised by taxes and illegal rates in the last ten years

The Independent Fiscal Responsibility Authority (Airef) has taken advantage of its opinion report on the fiscal risks surrounding public accounts to first This Thursday with a high level of detail the main judicial setbacks in fiscal matters conceded by the State since 2014 and especially the potential amount that has been forced to reintegrate already or that it still has to return to taxpayers.

The result is striking. In the last ten years justice has forced the Government to reintegrate companies and individuals No less than 22,552 million eurosan equivalent amount if not exceeding the not a few resources obtained with the tax increases decreed in this period, some of which have subsequently been revoked by the courts.

The List of great fiarscos It is extensive. The autonomic stretch of Hydrocarbons Tax better known as the sanitary cent, the IRPF of the benefits of maternity and paternity, the retention of dividends to large foreign investment funds, the reform of the Corporation Tax of the year 2016 -recently reinstated by the State -, the hydraulic fee, the municipal plusvalia, the disproportionate sanctions of the 720 model. Taxpayers with goods abroad … a bleeding of resources that has not been limited to returns but includes delay interests – by the settled practice of delaying processes and delaying payments – and the legal cost of litigating with those affected.

There are many whose impact continues today. It is expected that the illegal financing of the electric social bonus costs 642 million euros, the judgment of the Supreme that declared the IAE applied to mobile phone operators illegal to compensate for the municipalities for the suppression of the tax will cost 1,479 million euros, the Return of the IRPF paid for more by mutualists An invoice of at least 1.7 billion euros and the declaration as illegal of the second autonomic stretch of the hydrocarbons tax approved by the Government against the criterion of community regulations will cost up to 6,500 million euros.

The tax authority admits that There may be variations in these figureswhich have been removed from the official information published by the general intervention of the State in the General State account because Hacienda does not give information in their budget documents or in the information that elevates Brussels. For example, it warns that in the case of the hydrocarbons tax the invoice could be reduced to the extent that the affected companies had transferred that higher fiscal cost to the end users, since there would be no harm and the possibility that affected users claim the public treasury is very remote. On the other hand, the return of IRPF to the mutualists could even be superior in amount since the universe of affected potentials is not precisely known.

Value risk in advance

It also considers that these fiscal contingencies They have become a constant and large risk For the stability of public accounts and that the Ministry of Finance and the rest of the affected departments have to do more to take them into account and prevent them from becoming a threat to the fulfillment of the fiscal consolidation objectives. Especially because the airf has detected that recurring errors are produced that then translate into a millionaire fiscal cost, such as the inadequate use of the royal decree law to execute substantial modifications of taxes -something that the courts have rejected in a recurring manner -, the overreach in the use of the law, the omission of explicit warnings by the European Union -as in the case of the regime Sanctioner of the 720 model, which remained despite the express rejection of different European instances, or the sanitary cent- or the persistence in approveing ​​things that are rejected once after another by the courts, as has happened with the financing regimes with charge to the electricity of the electric social bond.

Sources of the Fiscal Authority understand that reaching this point would be necessary for the government to previous In this way.

The agency that watches over the proper management of public accounts also questions the practice of the Treasury to apply dilatory strategies to delay payment even when it seems evident that there is no possibility of gaining the case, generating high costs in the form of delay interest. It proposes that once the possibilities of losing are high are accelerated as much as possible, not even to respect the rights of the affected taxpayers but Even if it is only to reduce the cost for the state.