He Government Salvador Illa continues to take steps to shape the economic agreement with ERC. After appointing the advisory group that will detail 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 considering several options to expand the latter body. The main one is to absorb the senior officials of the National Tax Administration Agency (AEAT) who work in Catalonia.
According to the latest available data, “Hacienda Own” employs 852 people, of which only 34.2% belong to tax organizations specialized in tax management and control. Concretely, it only has 23 inspectors and 269 managers, according to the closing figures for the 2023 financial year. A workforce that pales in comparison to the nearly 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 powers the autonomous body has. The ATC is only authorized to ensure the overall management of its own taxes (such as that of sugary drinks, that of large commercial establishments and the water charge) and transferred taxes (such as Heritage and Inheritances), as well as the fight against tax fraud and executive recovery of tax debts and other public law revenues of the Generalitat and other Catalan administrations.
In search of a “formula”
Illa and the Minister of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero, considered different quantified objectives to expand the autonomous agency. He president He first declared in Parliament his intention to quadruple the size of the entity. Subsequently, the advise It proposes a workforce of between 4,000 and 5,000 men. Beyond this dance of numbers, the sources consulted by elEconomista.es It is difficult for the Generalitat to quickly increase the ATC workforce exclusively through calls for tender. It was precisely Romero who announced that “incentives” were being tested and that a “legal formula” was being sought to attract senior AEAT officials. The legal requirement is not minor, since in 2015 the Supreme Court had already prohibited the transfer of AEAT inspectors to the Catalan agency, as reported by this media.
If it is planned, as provided for in the investiture pact between PSC and ERC, that the region will fully manage the personal income tax (IRPF) from 2026, the ordinary route to increase the workforce seems insufficient . “Only by negotiating the bases of the appeals can we go through months,” says an experienced union source.
Added to this is the fact that the delay in preparing budgets, mainly due to the impasse in which ERC finds itself until it renews its leadership, complicates the programming of new calls for public employment. The regional executive assumed a few weeks ago that he would not have up-to-date accounts on January 1, 2025, as he had promised when he took office at the end of the summer.
Regardless, 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 reports from the Catalan organization, in the last six years only three processes of selection of tributary bodies have been carried out. In 2022, the Catalan agency coordinated and managed for the first time a call for applications for 120 tax director positions, the largest in its history, which was resolved last year. He 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 120 new career civil servants and 85 executives will be stabilized. In this context, the most plausible way to scale the ATC quickly and in a relevant volume seems to be the recruitment – “the public purchase offer”, says another interlocutor – of inspectors and managers of the AEAT.
Internal opposition
Both Gestha and IHE have expressed concern over the decision. The first organization considers this effort “unfeasible” and asserts that the majority of AEAT workers “would refuse to join the ATC because they lack emotional and family ties in the region, exponentially increasing the mobility demands already high in Catalonia, without an increase in wages. and integration into a higher body constitute sufficient attraction.”
IHE went further in its opposition to the movements of Government. In a harsh statement issued after learning the content of the agreement between Republicans and Socialists, the association warned of the need to take legal measures to prevent the forced integration of state inspectors into civil servants of the Generalitat. “The colleagues assigned to it are not and never will be officials of a so-called Catalan national tax office, which has no place in our legal system, even if they want to coerce and deceive citizens with fallacious arguments .”
