The control actions carried out by the Service tax administration (SAT) to combat tax evasion and avoidance have contributed to increasing collection, said Francisco Arias Vázquez, head of the Tax Revenue Policy Unit of the Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) in the SHCP Chair, organized by the UNAM Faculty of Economics.
In the session “Tax policy in Mexico” information was revealed on tax revenue as a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which went from 13.1% in 2018 to 14.5% in 2020, the first year of the covid-19 pandemic. Although still below the average of 33.5% of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
“The inspection actions of the SAT, all aimed at closing spaces for tax evasion and avoidance, is what has given good results without creating new taxes, without increasing the rates of existing taxes, tax and administrative reforms have been carried out,” he said. a public official in a personal capacity.
The public servant added that in Mexico the tax evasion it is a problem, but if it is well attended to, it is an area of opportunity because reducing the spaces to commit it increases tax collection.
During the past year, additional collection efforts reached an amount of 524,426 million pesos, according to data provided by the SAT. Additional efforts are focused on three areas: large taxpayers, control and collection.
Only the audit program for large taxpayers resulted in a collection of 208,901 million pesos in 2021. In that period, the SAT audited 1,248 large taxpayers.
The figure collected in 2021 is lower by 8.5% compared to 2020, given that in the first year of the pandemic the treasury obtained 216,001 million pesos for controlling large taxpayers.
Meanwhile, at the end of the first quarter of 2022, the audit of large taxpayers has left a collection of 42,801 million pesos. This is an increase of 7.3% compared to the same period in 2021. In the first three months of the year, 270 large taxpayers have been audited.