Cuadernos fiscales No. 6. Administración tributaria

The multiplicity of functions that are entrusted to the modern State by constitutional means imply, from the ideal of the social State of law, great financial challenges for the Public Treasury. So it is the Tax System that is mainly responsible for generating the income required to finance public services and, in general, state activity. From this perspective it is clear that the scarcity of resources is only overcome to the extent that the Tax Authority manages to make effective the tax obligations that fall on taxpayers and other taxable subjects of the System. Therefore, it is not surprising that tax doctrine has coined the expression "a Tax System is worth what the Tax Administration in charge of applying it is worth."

The success of a Tax Administration in its task of ensuring public income and protecting the tax base is of utmost importance since the Tax System of a country is fundamental to sustaining the quality of life of its citizens through the financing of programs and services. public and income redistribution. This is particularly true in current times, when economic volatility has weakened public revenues and is expected to result in a decrease in taxpayer compliance. Tax administrations around the world now recognize the need to focus on maximizing compliance under difficult conditions (MacPherson, 2011).

The universal conception of the functions assigned to the Tax Authority reduces their application in the sense that its main task is understood as the application of the Tax System as a regulatory whole where, from the perspective of the norm, it is considered and is regulated from the birth of the substantial and formal tax obligation until its respective extinction.