The number of seizures scheduled by the Tax and Customs Authority (AT) increased by 40% in 2022, compared to the previous year, to 522,727, but this total still corresponds to about half of those registered before the pandemic, in 2019.
These figures are contained in the 2022 report on combating tax and customs fraud and evasion, sent by the government to parliament, which points out that the variation in the number of seizures is influenced by the mitigation measures taken during the pandemic, namely the suspension of coercive collection acts, as well as the creation of unofficial payment plans.
According to the same data, 218,059 (42%) of the total seizures registered were on income and other valuables of taxpayers with tax debts, a category of assets that includes, for example, bank accounts.
The category of assets most seized by the tax authorities is followed by salaries and wages, with 110,267 seizures (21% of the total) and credit (with 85,356 or 16%).
Real estate (a category that includes houses, plots of land, storage rooms, warehouses or garages, for example) accounted for 5% of the seizures, or 27,027.
The weight of the assets seized in the total number of seizures follows the provisions of the law, which stipulates that the selection of assets to be seized must give priority to those that are “easiest to realize in cash”.
As for the number of seizures per year, this rose to 1.3 billion in 2017 and 2018, falling in 2019 to 1,089,207. In 2020 and 2021, years marked by the covid-19 pandemic, the number fell to 552,370 and 374,586, respectively.
The seizure of the debtor’s assets is one of the forms of tax debt collection used by the AT after several warnings to the taxpayer about their non-compliance and after they have exhausted the various means and deadlines for voluntarily settling the outstanding tax.
Number of strategic tax debtors increased by 24% between 2018 and 2022
