5.2. Tax professionals

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 provide taxpayers with the knowledge and understanding of their tax duties and help them to fulfill them.

This collaboration has been implemented, over the last two decades, in the electronic submission of tax returns and other documents on behalf of third parties through collaboration agreements signed by the Tax Agency with other public administrations, with private entities and with institutions or organizations representing social, labor, business or professional sectors or interests, reaching, as of December 31, 2018, the figure of 4,427 signed adhesion agreements or protocols (14 of them throughout 2018).

Around 54 percent of the returns filed online have been submitted by social workers (of which around 88 percent have been submitted by 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.

During 2018, the Forum met in plenary session on two occasions.