He Government Salvador Illa continues to take steps to shape the economic agreement agreed with ERC. After appointing the advisory group that will outline the details of the self-proclaimed singular financing model and appointing the new director of the Tax Agency of Catalonia (ATC), the regional executive is weighing several options to expand this last body. The main one involves absorbing the senior officials of the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT) who work in Catalonia.
According to the latest available data, the ‘Hacienda Own’ employs 852 people, of which only 34.2% belong to tax bodies specialized in tax management and inspection. Specifically, it only has 23 inspectors and 269 managers, according to the closing figures for the 2023 financial year. A staff that pales in comparison to the almost 5,000 that its older sister has in the community alone. The national Treasury has 1,612 technicians and 498 inspectors in Catalonia.
It is necessary to take into account what the powers of the autonomous body are. The ATC is only qualified to carry out the comprehensive management of its own taxes (such as that of sugary drinks, that of large commercial establishments and the water fee) and transferred taxes (such as Patrimony and Inheritance), as well as the fight against tax fraud and the executive collection of tax debts and other public law income of the Generalitat and other Catalan administrations.
In search of a “formula”
Both Illa and the Minister of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero, have considered different target figures to expand the autonomous agency. He president He first stated in parliament that he intended to quadruple the size of the entity. Subsequently, the counselor He proposed a range of between 4,000 and 5,000 troops. Aside from this dance of figures, the sources consulted by elEconomista.es They find it difficult for the Generalitat to quickly increase the ATC staff exclusively through job calls. It was precisely Romero who announced that “incentives” are being tested and a “legal formula” is being sought to attract high-ranking AEAT officials. The legal requirement is not minor, since in 2015 the Supreme Court already barred the transfer of AEAT inspectors to the Catalan agency, as this media reported.
If it is intended, as stated in the investiture pact between PSC and ERC, that the region fully manage the Personal Income Tax (IRPF) starting in 2026, the ordinary way to increase the workforce seems insufficient. . “Only by negotiating the bases of the calls we can spend months,” says an experienced union source.
Added to this is that the delay in preparing the budgets, mainly the result of the impasse that ERC finds itself in until it renews its leadership, complicates the scheduling of new public employment calls. The regional executive assumed a couple of weeks ago that it will not have updated accounts on January 1, 2025, as it had promised when it took office at the end of the summer.
In any case, the growth rate of the regional Tax Agency does not seem to indicate that its structure could be significantly strengthened in just one year.
According to the reports of the Catalan organization, in the last six years only three selective processes for tributary bodies have been carried out. In 2022, the Catalan agency coordinated and managed for the first time a call for 120 positions for tax managers, the largest in its history, which was resolved last year. It did so four years late since these positions corresponded to the public offer announced by the Generalitat in 2019.
In 2024, 20 tax inspectors will be added to these new 120 career civil servants and 85 managers will be stabilized. With this background, the most plausible way to size the ATC quickly and in a relevant volume seems to be the recruitment – the “takeover bid”, says another interlocutor – of the inspectors and managers of the AEAT.
Internal opposition
Both Gestha and IHE have expressed concern about this move. The first organization considers this endeavor “unrealizable” and has argued that the majority of AEAT workers “would refuse to join the ATC as they lack emotional and family ties in the region, exponentially increasing the already high demands for mobility in Catalonia, without higher salaries and integration into a higher body are a sufficient attraction”.
IHE went further in its opposition to the movements of the Government. In a harsh statement published after learning the content of the agreement between Republicans and Socialists, the association warned of taking legal measures to prevent the forced integration of state inspectors into the Generalitat’s civil servants. “The colleagues who are assigned there are not, nor will they ever be, officials of a supposed national Catalan tax agency, which has no place in our legal system no matter how much they want to force and deceive citizens with fallacious arguments.”
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