The Objective published a new article featuring comments from lawyer Robert Amsterdam concerning his efforts to confront the lawless conduct of Hacienda. A translated selection of the article is below.
The international law firm Amsterdam&Partners LLD urges Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to immediately launch a thorough public investigation into the organizational failures that currently allow the Treasury to commit serious individual violations, the law firm maintains. Furthermore, they demand that the ministry headed by First Vice President María Jesús Montero detail the precise criteria and methodology it uses to reward tax inspectors and also clarify the magnitude of the incentives.
These are some of the requests made to the Spanish government by this London and Washington-based firm, determined to uncover that the Spanish Treasury is not acting rigorously and that its inspectors are acting on arbitrary grounds, perpetrating injustices against Spanish citizens and others who have been lured into becoming Spanish residents by the Beckham Act.
In five months, according to THE OBJECTIVE, the international law firm co-authored by Robert Amsterdam and Christopher Walles, authors of a report titled “Hacienda vs. The People: Spain and the Beckham Law,” has sent the Spanish government three letters requesting information to dispel any doubts surrounding the transparency, objectivity, neutrality, and bias with which these officials conduct themselves.
No response from Hacienda
The first letter from Amsterdam&Partners was sent on February 5th. This time, it was addressed to Soledad Fernández Doctor, Director General of the State Tax Administration Agency. The letter, which Fernández Doctor herself had sent them days earlier, was motivated by the concern that the AEAT had raised over the announcement published by this firm on December 7th in the Financial Times .
The British newspaper echoed the aforementioned report, a 148-page document in which the Amsterdam and Wales law firm focuses on testimonies from a “specific group of victims (nationals of other EU member states and other countries), who believed that the Spanish government wanted them to put their experience and expertise to use in Spain, and who are now being relentlessly persecuted because of taxes they were assured would not be levied.”
In the opinion of these two Anglo-Saxon lawyers—they maintain in all their briefs, the most recent dated May 6—the Spanish Treasury is hostile to taxpayers in general , and particularly to expatriates who pay taxes under the Beckham Law. Among many institutional failures, they find that the incentive system for its inspection staff—worth €125 million in 2025—forces employees to collect even more personal income and VAT before December 31, 2025.
Systemic violations
Amsterdam and Wales are meeting these days—as THE OBJECTIVE has learned —with Spanish tax experts to learn firsthand about the Tax Agency’s failures and bring them before the courts so the Treasury can respond and correct its actions. In their opinion, the AEAT has consolidated a series of systemic, serious, and recurring violations of the rule of law, resulting in fines, which most would consider incompatible with EU norms and values.
This office also finds that in the case of Spain, the taxpayer is abandoned by the administration, since he has to assume the costs of a fine, which is unknown how it will prosper , and whose resolutions allow too much time to pass, so that the idea of paying to appeal becomes the maximum .
Spanish tax experts criticize demagoguery
Just earlier this week, the Institute of Economic Studies (IEE) presented an important report, signed by 17 experts in Financial and Tax Law, highlighting the problem of tax litigation in Spain. Currently, more than 60% of all appealed tax assessments are upheld in full, which indicates a failure by the administration.
The IEE study emphasizes that litigation has been increasing in our country due to the sanctioning structure of our tax system. However, with one caveat, for the authors of the report from the Institute of Economic Studies, the interpretation that Anglo-Saxon lawyers make of the Spanish Treasury is somewhat “demagogic, and certainly not the way to approach tax reform based on principles of balance.”