Self-employed activities monitored by Spanish Treasury due to cash use

The Spanish Tax Agency (Agencia Tributaria) has published its Annual Tax and Customs Control Plan for 2022, which details its strategic objectives for the prevention and fight against tax fraud this year.

The Spanish tax authorities have decided this year to focus, above all, on transactions with cryptocurrencies carried out by taxpayers and on certain self-employed activities (autónomos, in Spanish), due to the risk of tax evasion that the frequent use of cash may entail.

The text of the new government strategy has already been published in the Spanish Official State Gazette (BOE). And it makes it clear that one of the keys to the actions of the Treasury this year will be to increase its presence "in those sectors and business models in which there is a high risk of the existence of an underground economy."

The Tax Agency emphasizes that these are economic sectors in which there is an "intensive use of cash as the only means of payment or its use above the legally established quantitative limitations."

The authorities explain that cash is still "closely linked" to the shadow economy. For this reason, they insist that "cash operations will continue to be the object of attention once again by the Tax Administration."

The sectors

According to the newspaper El Economista, this strategy represents the continuation of the previous year's plan, in which the Tax Agency already focused on various sectors where the use of large amounts of cash is common.

These are, according to the Spanish specialized website Autonomos y Emprendedores, the following sectors:

• The hospitality and restaurant sector
• The construction sector
• The sector of home renovation or home improvement
• The commercial sector
• The fruit picking sector
• The sector of real estate activities