Lower House of Parliament (Congress) has approved a new law drawn up to counter tax fraud, which will affect, above all autónomos.

The new law seeks to control cash payments and lower the cap on cash transactions made by companies and self-employed workers to 1,000 euros down from 2,500 euros. The objective, of course, is to uncover payments in black.

However, from this Monday Hacienda can impose fines on autónomos of to 50,000 euros for having “double-use soft ware;” in other words, programmes that hide part of the a person’s accounting, thus avoid declaring it. Until now there was no specific law against possessing such a soft-ware tool.

Therefore, Hacienda is going after people who use such programmes that can even issue invoices for the full amount without it reflecting in the books.

So, be warned, at the beginning of this week the new law came into force that allows Hacienda not only to act against companies that sell these programmes, but also those that have them installed.

(News: Spain)