The National Court (Audiencia Nacional) has concluded that the Tax Agency failed to prove the singer was a tax resident in Spain in 2011, and has ordered the refund of the paid amount, fines, and late-payment interest. The Spanish Tax Agency—increasingly under scrutiny—has already announced that it will ask the State Attorney’s Office (Abogacía del Estado) to appeal the ruling.
“After more than eight years of enduring brutal public targeting, orchestrated campaigns to destroy my reputation, and sleepless nights that ultimately took a toll on my health and my family’s well-being, the National Court has finally set the record straight. There was never any fraud, and the Administration itself was never able to prove otherwise, simply because it wasn’t true. Every step of the process was leaked, distorted, and amplified, using my name and public image to send a threatening message to other taxpayers,” lamented the singer this Monday, complaining that she has been “treated as guilty.”
Shakira explained, “Today, that narrative collapses, and it does so with the weight of a court ruling. My greatest wish is that this ruling sets a precedent for the Tax Agency and serves the thousands of ordinary citizens who are abused and crushed every day by a system that presumes their guilt and forces them to prove their innocence from a state of financial and emotional ruin. This victory is dedicated to them.”
“A system that presumes their guilt.” That phrase perfectly sums up the weariness suffered by many Spanish taxpayers, which has sparked an international campaign led by a US law firm, Robert Amsterdam’s, who yesterday explained how “the Shakira case is the prime example of how the Spanish Tax Agency extorts citizens… The Tax Agency targets a famous person, threatens them, and, in doing so, manages to instill fear in society. It demands millions of euros in payments, treating them as guilty for years and trying to destroy their reputation to pressure them to pay. Only those who can afford good lawyers for ten years stand any chance of having their case make it to court. This case proves that the Tax Agency behaves like a mafia whose only goal is to line the pockets of the government of the day at the expense of treating citizens like criminals.”
Much of the problem undoubtedly stems from a perverse incentive system, which encourages tax inspectors to earn more the more fraud assessments they issue, without being affected by how the process ultimately ends… In other words, the tax inspectors who collected a bonus for the tax assessment that has now been overturned for Shakira will not have to return the income that those assessments brought them at the time.
