Back in October 2010 in the Auditor.info we released the poor control that area of the City Revenue realized on the tax liability of Large Taxpayers. A new report by the Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) goes even further and argues that "there is no selection criterion, such as tax" so that no one knows why some are supervised and not others.

It is important to first define what "large taxpayers" are. According to the Government Administration of Public Revenue (AGIP, for its acronym in Spanish) they are those that "for amounts taxed or activities that they generate have a greater fiscal interest for the City Government." It is also essential to clarify that the inspection body "relieved that the inspection process is performed on the gross income of the tax group."

The report explains that the Fiscal Investigation Department, which depends on the direction of the same name, "did not have documentation to support the selection of taxpayers to be audited during 2012."

The person responsible for the sector explained how the selection for Large Taxpayers was made, but has "no evidence of these procedures," the AGCBA cannot comment on "the fairness of the election."

In fact, it was discovered that "there was a list of large taxpayers in the audit process." Audit "became the order of that information on May 2, 2013 and was provided by the audited body on July 18 of that same year" because "the file exclusively was prepared to comply with the order of the Watchdog.”

The analysis was done on the data the Audit said that they are "erroneous" as it was reported that there were 275 Great Taxpayers, as determined by the AGCBA, "there were 506, of which 180 were in the process of audit for 2012.”

In part the mistake arises "from the constraints of the computer system", originally called New Fiscal, that "does not have all the information required by the General Subdivision of Control that should make alternative reports in spreadsheets and Access."

The AGCBA’s main objective was to analyze the work of the Branch, together with all Directorates affiliated with it, between April and November 2013. However, "it was verified that there were several changes in 2011 and 2012 both the structure and the definition of missions and operations ", so they decided to" extend the scope to those dates." The report was finally adopted in October 2014.

The Procedures

In addition, the audit found significant delays at different levels of control. For starters, "the 2012 action plan was approved on August 21, 2012," that is, when it had already been more than half a year.

On the other hand, 84% of the cases analyzed "was not met within 48 hours is set to notify inspectors assigning an audit." The average for this communication was 11 days.

"In 37% of the sample they also respected the two days set for the supervisor and inspectors constitute intervening in the fiscal address of the taxpayer to notify and initiate verification." The average for these cases was two and a half weeks and an extreme case of 143 days between which was notified to the inspector on the assigned task and the date on which it informed the audited future was found.