06/02/2015
The EUROsociAL Programme supports the Directorate-General of Taxation of the Costa Rican Ministry of Finance in the creation of a tax call centre.
Promotion of voluntary compliance with tax obligationsPromoción del cumplimiento voluntario de las obligaciones tributariasPromotion of voluntary compliance with tax obligationsPromotion of voluntary compliance with tax obligations
From 19th to 23rd January 2015, within the framework of the European Commission’s EUROsociAL II Programme, a technical assistance action was carried out in Costa Rica for the creation of a tax call centre. This is part of the “Promotion of voluntary compliance with tax obligations” action of the Public Finance area, in which the Spanish Tax Agency (AEAT) acts as an operational partner.
Currently taxpayer enquiries are not centralized and are instead channelled to different offices of the Ministry of Finance through the territorial tax agencies, resulting in user dissatisfaction and legal insecurity due to a lack of uniform criteria for responses, as the same question posed to different civil servants often receives different replies. All of this hampers proper compliance with tax obligations, generates disputes in control processes and ultimately affects the image of the institution.
In this context, improvement of the taxpayer information and assistance services provided by the Directorate-General of Taxation (DGT) is increasingly necessary, due to the impact on promotion of voluntary compliance with tax obligations, in order to increase tax collection at the lowest possible cost to the institution and taxpayers.
The objective of the technical assistance action was to support the management and technical staff of the DGT in defining the strategy for implementation of the contact centre, taking into account the services to be provided, as well as the organizational structure, rules of operation, and job descriptions of the staff and managers of the centre, so that the DGT can improve and expand the range of services offered through the Tax Information Centre (CIT).
The experts who provided the technical assistance were María Soledad Fernández Herranz and María José Portilla López, both from the Department of Tax Management of Spain’s AEAT.
The ultimate objective of this action of this FIIAPP-managed EUROsociAL Programme is to support the Costa Rican tax agency in the implementation of a tax call centre, which will make it possible, on the one hand, to centralize the enquiries currently being received by different offices and administrations and, on the other, to ensure that replies received by taxpayers are consistent regardless of the office or civil servant responding.
