La protección de los datos personales de los obligados tributarios durante su captación en el contexto nacional y de la unión europea

Abstract

The development of technology has facilitated massive processing of the citizens’ information by tax administrations. This situation produces tensions between the taxpayers’ rights and the constitutional duty to contribute to the sustainability of public expenditure. The processing of information is a normative reality that consists of multiple technical procedures that can be grouped in the collection, use and transfer of the taxpayers’ personal data. The process of incorporating data is the first technical operation that allows the Administration to include relevant information in their databases to enforce the tax system. The extent of assurance that grants the right to the protection of personal data and the diversity of problems encountered in processing operations, has forced us to focus the object of study of this doctoral thesis on the collection of personal information with tax relevance by the Spanish tax administration in the national and the European Union context. The study of the regulation of the processing of personal information by the tax administration poses the challenge of achieving equilibrium points between respect for the powers of control that make up the content of the fundamental right and an effective enforcement of the duty to contribute to sustain the public expenditure. To achieve this objective, this doctoral thesis encloses a historical study about the evolution of the right to protection of personal data, gathering the features of each one of the past regulations, demarcating its current legal framework, characterizing the fundamental right in the legal system and analyzing the results of its effects into the field of tax administration. Therefore, as the starting point for the delimitation of the collection procedure, we analyze the concepts of data with tax significance and personal information, then we propose a delimited concept of tax-related personal data and draw up a guide to detect it during that procedure. We also study the different ways of information collection and the guarantees that make up the content of the this right, analyzing the legitimacy of processing and the adequacy of the limitations that can be established on the data subjects’ principles and rights during the collection of personal information carried out by tax authorities in Spain and in other countries of the European Union. Finally, we have performed an analysis of the regulations governing the collection procedure executed by the Spanish Tax Agency, examining the implementation of the principle of information and the public filling system from the standpoint of the principle of data quality. This research has enabled us to confirm the concurrence of situations that could be improved in order to achieve the mentioned balance, proposing solutions that allow us to meet the demands projected by the content of the right to protection of personal data.