First step of the Government with the Tax Agency of Catalonia to collect the IRPF for next year

BarcelonaFirst step by the Government to resize the Catalan Tax Agency (ATC) and prepare it to take on all income tax collection for next year, one of the commitments to deploy the new singular financing. The Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, announced this Friday that the executive council next Tuesday will approve the hiring of 102 people on a temporary basis to carry out this year's income tax campaign and will also create 90 structural positions to join the ATC staff on a permanent basis. "The challenge of managing income tax for 2026 is enormous and the Catalan Tax Agency must grow and gain muscle," Romero argued in a press conference from Girona.

In total, there are 2.5 million Catalans who file their income tax return electronically, but there are also 350,000 people who do so in person or by telephone. This group of people will be served by the 102 tax advisers hired by the Government. The aim of the executive is for the ATC to have a greater participation in this year's tax campaign in order to prepare it for next year's, when it will have to take over completely.

Apart from the temporary increase in this staff, the number of offices will also be increased: in total, there will be 36, about seven or eight more than last year, according to the councillor. In addition, there will also be 87 citizen service counters available throughout Catalonia, more than double the number of a year ago, when there were 35. Romero has quantified this reinforcement of staff and offices at 1.5 million euros. Until now, the management carried out by the ATC of the tax campaign was 4% and the councillor has proposed to reach 20%.

The Ministry of Economy wants this year's campaign to be a kind of pilot test to see how far the Catalan Tax Agency's "capacity" to collect personal income tax goes with a view to 2026. Of these 90 positions, 20 will be for inspectors, 30 for technicians and 40 for tax managers. The whole process will begin this spring with a first call for 20 positions for technicians. Romero has recalled that at the moment the ATC only collects 9% of taxes and that the agreement for a new singular financing implies reaching "managing all of those we generate": "We must prepare all the structures so that it is possible and make a good transition with the Spanish Tax Agency."

At the beginning of the year, The minister herself said that she saw it as "difficult" for Catalonia to be able to collect all the personal income tax next year. and recalled that one of the difficulties came from the size of the current Tax Agency of Catalonia, which has about 800 workers, while the Spanish one has more than 4,000 in Catalonia. However, this Friday Romero was more optimistic about the fulfillment of this first phase of the agreement. "Both we and ERC know the tax administration very well and we are aware of its difficulties, but that should not prevent us from reaching our goal," he said.

The controversy over the consortium

The Minister of Economy did not want to delve into the controversy that was generated in Esquerra following the incorporation into its political report – which must be approved at the congress on March 15 and 16 – of the endorsement of a temporary consortium between the State and the Generalitat to begin collecting personal income tax, which later had to rectifyRomero recalled that the PSC included this figure in its electoral programme and it is also what is written in the Statute, but with the negotiations with Esquerra, he recalled, that "disappeared". "What is written today and what I have the obligation to comply with is that the Tax Agency of Catalonia deploys all this management and that is what we do. We are a Government that complies with agreements," he said.