It’s believed, since nowadays it’s impossible to give an exact amount, that in Spain there are around three millions of uninhabited properties. The Spanish Exchequer is aware that in a lot of cases those properties are being rented, but the revenues are not being declared. The Government has being creating a plan against tax evasion, in order to allow the Autonomous Communities to start with the controls through computer method to people and companies that, although they own properties, they declare themselves free.

The method will consist in identifying the properties which revenues are not being declared, with the cooperation of the Tax Office (that is the Exchequer) of the cadastral bureau. There it will be possible to find out who are the owners, whether they are persons or companies. The involvements are the Central Government, to whom it is necessary to declare the obtained revenues, and the Canaries Government where it is required to declare the Local Taxes (IGIC). In the case of shops, when those will have being identified, it will be necessary to visit them in order to control if they are really unoccupied, or, on the contrary there is an activity achieved in them.

The Government it’s also studying the possibility to reapply the tax deduction for the properties. In this way it will be possible to detect a lot of rentals that are being paid but not being declared. To do so, in the tax declarations would be introduced the owners data which are renting, with their NIF (taxpayer identification number).

Worst will be the case in which the owners declare the usual home tax relief (where the family is supposed to be living) but in fact they rent it out and they don’t declare the incomes. This case is twice illegal, in one hand they get a tax relief as they declare that the family is living in that house, and in the other hand they receive an income that they neither declare.

The owners that buy a house, afterwards they sell it in order to re-invert the amount in a new house in order to follow with the tax relieves wrongly applied will also be controlled.

Therefore, this plan against tax evasion proposed by the Central Government should be applied by the Central Government itself and also by the Autonomous Communities, the cadastral bureaus, inspectors of the Autonomous Communities, etc.…

The Exchequer is studying also a plan of measures in order to fight against the tax evasion in general. It will have over 300 measures to fight it. This plan of measures it’s also studying the creation of companies complex operations to evade the taxes.

In the other hand, the Exchequer is aware of the money that turns around the real estate. For this reason, they will take concrete measures to control all the process from the land buying, the urbanization, the payments to construction companies, sales, etc... etc.… The Exchequer is also aware of the fact that a lot of buildings are registered with a different value of the real one, this is the buying and selling contracts are made with a value but in truth they register the buying for an unreal value, which means that in a lot of cases the discrepancy between the value of the sold house and the ridiculous declared price is obvious.

The data crossover between the central and autonomous administrations has started and the lawyers are providing buying and selling operations data de that are being signed every day in their offices.

The application of the following, and others, important measures against the tax evasion is being studied:

Creation of a Tax Police.
Strengthening of the state legal services.
Creation of criminal and capital laundering investigation teams.
The authority to investigate current accounts without notice to the holder.