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TAXEDU

PECT at the University, a necessary and enriching project for AEAT

PECT at the University, a necessary and enriching project for AEAT

Begoña Hernando Polo

We have been teaching a conference on civic-tax education at the Complutense University for three consecutive years. During these days, colleagues of the Delegation from all functional areas and Institutional Relations try to convey how the Tax Agency (AEAT) works and what our action is based on, whose mandate is first included in the Constitution and, specifically, in article 31 of it.

I emphasize what to transmit, because in today's society, where immediacy and accessibility to a lot of information prevail, it is not easy, to talk about public service and capture the attention and interest of chic@s 20-22 years old, by officials who are not professionals in the world of communication, but the surveys speak for themselves:  with a forum of more than 70 students, and 44 surveys answered the days have liked very much to 86.36% of the students and, among them, a significant number say that they have discovered their professional future among us.

As a personal assessment, I can only be proud of this project, which arose after having seen some practices that were carried out in other delegations and in other countries and having witnessed the great work that the trainers of the schools carry out in schools since 2003. This idea materialized thanks to the effort and work of many colleagues, who intervene or have intervened in the past in the days that in these 3 years we have been doing at the University.

The PECT is a beautiful and tremendously necessary project in the AEAT, just go to a class in a school, or a day at the university, and see the gratitude and good reception by teachers and the unexpected interest it arouses in the students. The field of civic education is increasingly present in more orders of our society: road safety education, financial, responsible consumption ... and the AEAT must try to be in the front line, not only because it is part of its main objective of promoting voluntary compliance, but as a vanguard and prestigious institution that it is. The European Union has recently joined this project by launching in November 2018 its portal (TAXEDU), whose objectives we share 100%, as cited on its website:

  • contribute to the education of European youth in tax matters;
  • reducing tax evasion and fraud in Europe, through improvements in education and information;
  • let European citizens know what services are possible through tax collection (education, health, etc.).

 How do we do it?:

- counting on officials enthusiastic about their work and the "public thing", who do not hesitate to give up a part of their time to value their profession, the institution in which they develop it and the public good they serve.

- using tools that try to interact with students: very graphic presentations, video support, online access to tools of the AEAT portal, virtual survey and group dynamics.

Likewise, the support of the Special Delegate and SEPRI is fundamental: in 2019 it promoted a Collaboration Protocol between the AEAT and the University that has meant the institutional framework for the activities that were being developed and that has been the response to the request that had been made from this Institutional Relations Unit. This protocol has been signed by 4 public universities (UCM, UAM, UC3M and UPM) and is pending in another one (URJC).