Below is a machine translated excerpt from a feature interview by Crónica Global with Robert Amsterdam and Christopher Wales following the publication of the white paper. To read the full article, please visit Crónica Global.
What are you doing here in Barcelona? What’s your purpose in coming here?
Robert Amsterdam (RA): We’re meeting with several law firms to discuss matters related to the Beckham Law . We’ve been doing the same in Madrid, and I imagine we’ll be back very soon to continue the discussions.
Who have you been meeting with?
RA : We can’t say who we’re meeting with because of the threat that implies.
Politicians, businessmen…?
Christopher Wales: With many Spaniards from different walks of life and all kinds of people… Although at the moment we’re avoiding politicians a bit, because the danger is that if we see someone from one party, the other will say: “Oh, they’re with them.” And we’re not on anyone’s side . We’re meeting primarily with law firms. Law firms, business leaders, people with experience in government, NGOs, civil society.
How did those meetings go? What were your expectations?
RA: Look, we believe that the situation, not only regarding the Beckham Law but also the fiscal situation in Spain, is a national crisis. The fear in the streets, the fear of everyone regarding this, is incompatible with the democratic values upheld by the European Union. So we’re treating it as an emergency .
And every day we’ve spent in Spain, we’ve met with Spanish people who are terribly affected, who have lost their jobs. Don’t listen to the Treasury! You know what they write in El País and other newspapers. That completely false narrative that they’re finding fraud. The Treasury is hitting the poorest people in Spain the hardest .
People with lawyers have a much better chance than the poor, whose cars are being taken away and their wages garnished. So it’s very important not to believe the IRS narrative that they’re uncovering fraud. They’re not uncovering fraud. They’re uncovering tax planning.
What is your position, Mr. Wales?
CW: What they’re doing, in my view, is inventing fraud. The Constitution requires and dictates a presumption of innocence. That you’re innocent until proven guilty. The IRS seems to have turned that on its head.
So what do they do? They find a company that has employees paying taxes in Spain, that has employees contributing to Social Security in Spain, that has Spanish clients who also pay taxes in Spain. And they say it’s a setup. They say this company was built to defraud the Spanish Treasury. And that’s a myth.
They go to court and say this is a simulation. But the simulation is on their side. It’s a pure fabrication. We’ve seen the facts. The more perfectly set up the company is, the more honestly and well it conducts its affairs, the more likely they are to say, “It must be completely fake, because it all fits together too well.” So it all only fits together if this is a fraud. It’s complete nonsense.
RA: A no-win situation, motivated by the fact that the tax inspectors can’t lose.So you think the tax inspector exists primarily to harm Spanish citizens?
RA: The citizen or taxpayer has no chance of winning, and the tax inspector has no chance of losing. The tax inspector only increases his bonus based on how much he manages to collect, and then the poor taxpayer has to give the money to the tax office immediately. And then wait five to eight years for a resolution.
Meanwhile, taxpayers are trapped in the hell of administrative courts—the European Union has said they aren’t even courts—and are wasting their time there. Why is the government allowing them to waste their time? Because the government already has their money.
So you lose your money, and the government leaves you waiting 5 to 8 years for your day in court, where it seems at least 50% of people win… if they can stick it out until trial. But the IRS issued a statement saying they get 70% through settlements. Honestly, if someone puts a gun to your head, that’s not really a settlement .
That’s what we’re trying to make clear. What the Treasury is describing is a false narrative for the Spanish people . And that’s why we’re here. We’ve brought in a world expert in taxation. We’d like you to meet Dr. Wales. And we’d like to fix a system that has clearly been broken .
There’s no legal basis for incentivizing an inspector. First, there shouldn’t be any incentive at all. Second, if you’re going to have such a bad system, you take it to the extreme when you make the inspector completely unaccountable for erroneous assessments. So we’re making a multifaceted criticism.