The Treasury is proceeding to annul all the sanctions imposed on those who hid assets abroad for having been declared disproportionate. Thus, it faces thousands of returns of fines for not complying with the declaration of the so-called model 720 that obliges taxpayers to portray their assets abroad.

Sources from the Tax Agency admit to this newspaper that “the procedure followed is nullity by operation of law” and an example of a return is the 150,000 euros that a taxpayer has been notified this week of which EL MUNDO has learned. His lawyer, Esaú Alarcón, assures that, after a long process, he already has a letter from the Tax Agency admitting the return of the money.

The Treasury thus follows the recommendation of the direction of the legal service of the body that recommended to the minister herself that she proceed to annul sanctions. “It is considered appropriate to propose to the Minister of Finance that, following the opinion of the Council of State, issue a resolution (…) and in relation to the Disciplinary File (…) declare the nullity of full rights.” It is stated in the Agency’s document, which invokes Article 25 of the Constitution in order not to apply sanctions considered inappropriate. And these are, according to the rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU and the Supreme Court, which have judged excessive the penalty regime established by the previous minister, Cristóbal Montoro.

Montoro went from the 2012 tax amnesty to persecuting those who did not declare assets abroad in the new 720 model under penalties of up to 150% of the value of the money evaded for not declaring assets. The minimum fine for any inaccurate data or late submission amounted to 1,500 euros. It was a sanction designed for evaders but it has fallen on a flood of foreigners residing in Spain who were fined for not declaring their homes in their countries of origin, unleashing protests in Brussels.

As the European Commission questioned the system, Montoro himself began to paralyze sanctions in 2017, but between 2013 and that year, a multitude of taxpayers were sanctioned and can now aspire to annulment and refund. His successor Montero is forced to agree with them after recommending his legal services apply the court rulings in this regard.

“We are talking about thousands of sanctioned between those years,” says Alarcón, a lawyer from the Gibernau law firm that has been one of the most active against the sanctioning regime. At the Tax Agency they decline to provide figures of the money that will be returned, but he recalls that the procedure is long, because it implies a case-by-case opinion from the Council of State, although it is being favorable to nullity and refund. They also highlight that there are cases still in court and others pending appeal that they did not pay, so there would be no refund in their case.

For Alarcón, “it should be the Tax Agency that establishes a system so that everyone can quickly recover the sanctions that were imposed for the 720 model, as happened in its day with the health cent.”

In his opinion, the revocation should be ex officio and the return, automatic “without the need for the recovery procedure to be activated by the taxpayer.”

According to the criteria of The Trust Project