Tax assessments resulting from tax audit reports agreed with taxpayers may be altered by the cancellation of the previous related tax year’s liabilities

The current General Tax Law (GTL) introduced the option for a taxpayer and the tax authority to negotiate a tax audit report that was acceptable to both parties as a way to avoid tax litigation. The grounds for reviewing them are limited to where a declaration of absolute nullity is sought (article 217 GTL), or the taxpayers argue their consent was vitiated (article 155.6 GTL).

Tax assessments based on this type of agreed tax audit report may therefore seem untouchable but this is not in fact the case: they are provisional (article 101.4.b GTL) and may be altered by modifications to the related tax liabilities.

Take, for example, a situation in which an assessment is issued in tax year “n” that reduces the taxpayer’s carry forward tax losses to zero and this assessment is appealed. In tax year “n+1” the tax authority issues several tax audit reports, some of which are negotiated and agreed with the taxpayer, while others are issued without negotiation, some accepted by the taxpayers, others not. If the appeal against the settlement for tax year “n” is upheld, pursuant to Instruction 2/2006 of 28 March of the Directorate General of the Tax Agency (AEAT), the taxpayer may seek to offset the reinstated carry forward tax losses from year “n” against the tax liabilities of year “n+1”, regardless of the type of tax audit report that gave rise to the resulting assessments.