The Spanish Tax Audit Plan for 2023 announces tax audits focused on Spanish REITs e-commerce

On 27 February 2023 a resolution, dated 6 February 2023, of the Spanish Tax Administration Agency, was published in the Spanish Official Gazette approving the general guidelines of the Annual Tax and Customs Audit Plan for 2023 (the "Spanish Tax Audit Plan 2023").

We highlight below the main actions - some new and others reiterative - that the Spanish Tax Audit Plan 2023 foresees for this year, especially in the area of international taxation.

As a novelty, the Spanish Tax Agency is expected to focus its attention on the following actions:

• Control over Spanish REITs and, in particular, over the compliance of the investment requirements and the distribution of dividends to their shareholders.
• Control over e-commerce platforms.
• Control and regularisation of the Autonomous Community tax residency shopping.
• From a Wealth Tax perspective, control over land-rich entities owned by non-resident individuals, when those entities are non-resident entities holding real estate properties in Spain.
• Expediting the exchange of available information (from both national and international sources) to reinforce the control actions, both in the preliminary selection phase of candidates to be audited and in the development phase.
• Increase in the number of Joint Audits (which are tax audits made simultaneously with Tax Administrations from other jurisdictions).

As in previous years, the Spanish Tax Agency is expected to continue carrying out the following actions:

• Reinforcement of in-person visits by tax inspectors to the places where economic activity is carried out (after Covid-19 pandemic).
• Control over transactions carried out with virtual currencies.
• Control over the effective implementation of anti-abuse rules such as those addressed to limiting the deductibility of financial expenses, anti-hybrid rules and those addressed to avoid the abuse of tax treaties.
• Control over CIT and VAT groups, specially focused on the composition of these groups.
• Tax audits to check whether the non-resident recipients of Spanish-sourced dividends, interest or royalties qualify as beneficial owners with the aim of preventing an abusive use of EU legislation.
• Preferential attention to taxpayers who have pending carry-forward tax losses and other tax credits pending application in the CIT.
• Control over the transfer pricing strategies.
• Tax audits focused on the identification of structures that unduly benefit from the low taxation of non-cooperative jurisdictions or preferential regimes.

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