Never, not even during the process, has the Agència Tributària de Catalunya (ATC) attracted so much public attention. After ERC made it the protagonist of the agreement for the inauguration of Salvador Illa, the new government must transform it to make it an organization capable of meeting the most complicated challenge of Parliament: that Catalonia has its own model financing, the one who collects all the taxes.
The Minister of Economy, Alicia Romero, started the race from day one to respect a schedule that is the result of an agreement and, therefore, would not be the one that the ministry itself had designed. According to the agreement with the ERC, the ATC must be able to manage the entire 2025 personal income tax (which is collected a year later). This will be the first challenge and litmus test of the government’s commitment to new funding.
Despite the difficulties, the government is convinced that in the period of just over a year available to it, it will be able to strengthen the organization, currently very underdeveloped, to make it a tax agency worthy of the name.
In the first 100 days of his mandate, Romero has already made the two decisions that mark the beginning of the Illa government’s toughest hurdle test. Last October he formed the group of seven experts who 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 Tripartite, between 2003 and 2010.
The second decision was taken this week when, as reported by La Vanguardia, the Catalan administration and the Ministry of Finance formed a bilateral table to study formulas to quickly develop the ATV.
Almost at the same time, this Tuesday, the government took another important step by appointing Andreu Navas director of the ATC. Navas is a technician who has just headed the inspection body of the Provincial Delegation of Tarragona and who has extensive training and experience in the tax field.
Staged collection and expansion of the 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 highest number of taxpayers (17.4%, exceeded by only half a point by Andalusia). It is also the second country with the most citizens with income in the highest bracket. Concretely, 3,365 Catalans declared more than 600,000 euros during the last financial year. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s a community that has higher tax rates.
In this scenario, Catalonia must deploy a very effective tax agency from the first moment it begins to act. An objective that can only be achieved through the transfer of personnel and resources from the ministry to the regional administration.
According to calculations made by the government, the body that Andreu Navás will lead should have at least the same number of employees as the Public Treasury of Catalonia currently has, that is, between 4,000 and 5,000. A figure that contrasts with the staff who now work at ATC, 855 people in total. If at the time Illa had calculated that the current structure had to be multiplied by four, the new estimates even increase this figure.
The preferred formula for this type of transfer is that already used in Rodalies to create the new Catalan public company integrating Renfe staff: the agreement between the two structures.
Both in the case of the railways and in that of the Treasury technicians, the fact is that a good part of the staff comes from outside Catalonia, which is why they aspire to return after a few years in Barcelona. The loss of the right to mobility is generally, as union sources explain, the main reluctance of these workers to become employees of the Catalan administration, although the state administration is also generally preferred due to salaries and incentives.
So, Navas will have to deploy his best seductive skills – in the form of labor rights – to convince a high percentage of Treasury employees to choose to join a still under-resourced ATC. And what’s more, the native of Tarragona will have to do it being subject to a complicated schedule which, as we have already pointed out, begins in the second quarter of 2026, but which will become more complicated as the management of all taxes progresses. .
