The Supreme Court has annulled the requirement of the Tax Agency for taxpayers to submit the personal income tax return through the Internet, in such a way that the possibility of obtaining the income or return documents on printed paper was eliminated. The decision annuls the provisions on electronic processing in the Order of the Ministry of Finance HAC/277/2019.
In this way, the high court upholds in its ruling an appeal from the Spanish Association of Tax Advisors, and declares the nullity of several articles of the Treasury Order that established this general taxation. The Court indicates that the partially annulled Order incorporates as a novelty that "the possibility of obtaining the declaration and its corresponding deposit or return documents on printed paper generated through the Draft/Declaration Processing Service of the State Tax Administration Agency" disappears. Instead, the Order adds, the declaration must be submitted "by electronic means through the Internet" by the procedures and places it establishes.
The Supreme Court clarifies that the General Tax Law "recognizes the right, but not the obligation", of citizens to use electronic media, as well as the duty of the Administration to promote their use. "The Administration can carry out actions that promote and facilitate the achievement of a certain objective, in this case the use of electronic, computer and telematic means and techniques, but it cannot impose their compulsory use on citizens," underlines the Supreme Court.
Likewise, it adds that the General Tax Law recognizes taxpayers the right to interact with the Administration and to do so with the necessary guarantees through electronic, computer or telematic techniques and means, "but not the obligation to do so, certainly not as a result of this regulation, whose meaning as a general principle of the tax legal system is clear", the magistrates underline.
For this reason, the Supreme Court affirms that, in accordance with article 96.2 of the Law on the right of citizens to interact electronically with the Administration, it cannot be interpreted that the legal authorization provided for in other articles of that Law and that of personal income tax "allow the Minister of Finance to establish an obligation in general where article 96.2 of the Law establishes a right".
"And that is, precisely, what the contested Order does, since submission to the obligation to file the declaration electronically is addressed to the entire collective potential of taxpayers for a tax that, as is the case of personal income tax, reaches the generality of natural persons who carry out the taxable event, without distinguishing any personal condition that justifies imposing the obligation to declare and settle by electronic means, "added the judges.
On the other hand, they establish that determining the assumptions and conditions of presentation of the declarations by electronic or telematic means does not mean that the law authorizes the regulatory norm to annul the right, which is what the questioned Treasury Order does, but rather it requires identifying what characteristics or circumstances occur in certain taxpayers, that differentiate them from the set of taxpayers -for whom interacting electronically is a right- and that justify the relevance of imposing the obligation to necessarily interact in a formal way. electronically, instead of the right, exercisable or not, to do so in this way.
The judgment was issued by the Second Section of the Litigation Chamber, with a presentation by magistrate Rafael Toledano, and revokes the previous resolution of the National Court, which did not agree with the Association of Fiscal Advisors regarding the nullity of imposing the personal income tax return online.
