Tomarial reels off the new tax measures for 2016, focused on ensuring more tax collection

2016 brings important new tax and penal measures, relevant for businesses as well as for natural persons taxpayers, which show the clear tendency of the legislators to ensure tax collection at the cost of eroding rights such as legal certainty and due process of law.  “We are in the face of a breach of the constitutional principles with a single overriding objective - tax collection”. This was highlighted during the forum organized by Tomarial, Lawyers and Tax Advisors on new tax, commerce, and labour measures for the coming year.  

The event emphasized that the legislative changes that affect businesses, in the areas of taxation, commerce and labour, together with the logical uncertainty resulting from recent elections, make for a panorama which requires a space for reflection and analysis on the consequences that the measures, which have already been approved, are going to have on businesses.  

In respect to the General Taxation Law 58/2003 of 17 of December, Rafael Robledo, economist and tax manager of the Firm, considers that the reform is not clearly designed to fight against tax fraud, but rather it is aimed at improving tax collection, at the expense of the taxpayer’s obligations, who at the same time will be seeing the administrative burden they are subjected to increase.  

Robledo highlighted the modification which refers to the prescription, or time limitation, of taxation.  Article 66.Bis concedes to the Tax Authority the right to investigate tax periods that have prescribed, so long as they generate effects in tax periods that have not yet prescribed, even though more than fifteen years have elapsed. And the burden of proof falls on the taxpayer.