THE VAT scam at gas stations returned to the scene after the arrest of Victor Aldamahe Koldo’s plot is ‘winning’. And that’s it one liter in four fuel sold in Spain does not declare this tax. According to the industry, this is just the tip of the iceberg of a million-dollar fraud with which, as Repsol CEO Josu Jon Imaz explains: “You could build 10 hospitals per year.”
The fuel chain begins in the oil companies and the epicenter of crime is in the intermediate operator, who is the one who ultimately sells the fuel to the gas stations. “There are essences which receive a much lower price“, says the owner of a gas station.
The key moment of the scam arrives when the intermediary is responsible for collecting VAT which is paid when refueling. Since the Treasury requested it, this company has disappeared. “Like Guadiana, the same shareholders reappear, but with another company name,” emphasizes Joseba Barrenengoa, CEO of Easygas.
Employers calculate that with these movements the scam would be there 1 billion euros in 2023 and generate, as they say, a unfair competition because tax-free fuel is also cheaper. Nacho Rabadán of the CEEES Service Station Associations assures that “they are doing nothing other than destroying a sector” composed mainly of SMEs.
The sector, however, offers a solution: that this operator pay VAT before collecting it. A sort of approval that we already qualify as an “Italian solution”: “This measure was taken in Italy with great success and would prevent these operators from disappearing with large sums of VAT fraud,” says Inés Cardenal, spokesperson for AOP.
Despite everything, this is not the only problem that employers denounce because these fraudulent operators do not pay for other obligations of the sector, which could double the figure of deception. For this reason alone, the government He has already disqualified four companies.
