“The inspection, which has never stopped, will of course be more visible again this year with economic agents,” said Foreign Minister António Mendonça Mendes, stressing that “overcoming the restrictions of the pandemic will be “natural that we will see a greater presence of inspection in the field this year”.
The official, who is being heard by the Committee on Budget and Finance on the 2021 Anti-Tax and Customs Fraud and Evasion Report, said “this strengthening is “predictable depending on what the resumption of economic activity is”.
These are actions more focused on raising taxpayers’ awareness of compliance and information and verifying compliance, especially with billing systems.
According to the report, the tax inspectorate carried out 22,098 verification and verification actions in 2021, 14.9% less than in the previous year and 22.8% related to private taxpayers.
The document states that of that total of 22,098 actions, 17,056 actions involving legal entities (77.2%) and 5,042 actions related to individuals (22.8%).
In the course of last year, the tax authorities also carried out 4,769 external audit actions targeting companies, supplemented by approximately 44,700 preventive audit actions, mainly aimed at information gathering, joint actions with other public authorities, control of goods in circulation and analysis of VAT refunds.
Added together, all these actions amount to 66,791, which is a decrease of 6.9% compared to the 71,741 in 2020.
During the audit procedures carried out, voluntary corrections and regularizations were recorded for an amount of 1,326 million euros, of which 620 million (or 46.7%) relate to corrections made by the Large Taxpayers Unit (UGC), which represents an increase compared to the weight of 44.7% recorded in 2020.
Mendonça Mendes also said that inspections are not the only means of deterring evasion, and emphasized that the warning system led to the voluntary regularization of about 600 million euros.
Source: DN
