4.3. Social Co-operation

The fiscal intermediaries, as representatives of the taxpayers in their relations with the Tax Administration, collaborate with the Tax Agency in the management of the taxes, as they give the taxpayers the knowledge and understanding of their tax duties and they help them comply with them.

This collaboration has been orchestrated in the last two decades of electronic filing of tax returns and other tax documents in representation of third parties through collaboration agreements subscribed by the Tax Agency and other government bodies, private organisations or institutions or organisations representing social, labour-related, business or professional sectors or interests, reaching 4,089 agreements or membership protocols signed as of 31 of December 2012 (63 of them during 2012).

76 per cent of the total on-line tax returns have been filed by social collaborators, of which 95 per cent are tax professionals.

After reviewing the importance of tax professionals as social collaborators in the electronic filing of tax returns and other tax documents, the Tax Agency considered it convenient to establish a new relation framework with these tax intermediaries. For this, on 30 March 2011 the Associations of Tax Professionals Forum was created as a co-operative relationship body based on transparency and mutual trust, whose results benefit the taxpayers, favouring and facilitating the voluntary fulfilment of their tax duties.