The Agencia Tributaria, Spain's top tax agency, continues to stumble. The first director that Cristóbal Montoro named, Beatriz Viana, resigned in June 2013 because of confusion about how the agency will respond to a judge?s subpoena of documents related to La Infanta Cristina.
Viana's successor, the prestigious Santiago Méndez, was muddied in December when five directors were suspended for sanctioning the Mexican firm Cemex. Inspectors ruled that this decision went against the agency's commitment to be a disinterested party. Apart from these topical cases, the abuses that taxpayers have to put up with on a daily basis are alarming. The Agencia Tributaria decided to change the date that taxpayers need to pay the VAT to April 15 without prior warning.
This date only applied to people who set up direct deposits for their tax filings, and others had until April 21 given that April 20 was a holiday. This is not the first time that self-employed workers struggled to pay their VAT when filing taxes. A lack of information, complicated steps and instructions that did not work also affected general taxpayers when they tried to handle personal income tax. The lackadaisical attitude and botched jobs are excessive for a tax agency that should be treating taxpayers extremely well since they are enduring continuous tax hikes and weathering endless cases of government fraud. The Agencia Tributaria's director and the Minister of Finance have to balance the system, because they are responsible for making it work in a way that does not toy with taxpayers.
