A South-South exchange visit was held on September 11-13, 2013 in the city of Buenos Aires, dealing with “Information and Assistance for Tax Compliance”. It was mainly based on AFIP’s experience and complemented with presentations of the experiences of the tax administrations of Bolivia, Chile and Spain. Given the far-reaching extent of the subject matter, in terms of the different channels existing for communicating with the taxpayers and their related processes, the program designed allowed the flexible analysis of each of the communication channels, thereby maximizing the exchange of knowledge and experiences among the participants.

High level officials of the tax administrations of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Spain and Uruguay shared their experiences and widely and actively discussed the different topics of the program.

The main topics of interest raised during this visit were the following: Tools for telephone assistance – Statistics. Training and monitoring – tele-operators ; Channels for managing claims and suggestions; Web Page – Internal and external assistance tool; Information and induction campaigns – Cellular telephony; Personalized assistance – Service Center /AFIP Space /Mobile Agencies; Large Business Assistance; By appointment; Mobile Office and Tax Education programs.

The proposed working modalities through which the aforementioned issues could be considered and implemented within the framework of the EUROsociAL II Program were the following: exchange visits, meetings and technical assistance. In all cases, it was deemed appropriate for future activities to more precisely focus on issues and processes involving personalized assistance to taxpayers, the Informa program from Spain, assistance to large businesses, by appointments, personalized assistance, information and induction campaigns – cellular telephony and mobile telephone, managing claims and suggestions, Web Page – Internal and external assistance tool; thereby counting on a platform for responding to the countries’ specific needs.

The exchange visit was the result of requests made by the beneficiary countries to the EUROsociAL II Program, within the framework of the “Compliance with Tax Obligations” Action, of the “Public Finance” Area, coordinated by FIIAPP and whose operational partners are the AEAT of Spain, IEF of Spain and CIAT. From now on, CIAT, together with the partners of the EUROsociAL II Program will follow up the progress, requests and interests expressed by the tax administrations that are beneficiaries of the Program, with a view to moving forward with new activities for supporting voluntary compliance.