“Absolutely all” those inspected by ONAT “underreported,” the provincial newspaper explains.
14ymedio, Havana, 4 August 2025 — A total of 365,600,000 pesos (more than $925,000 at the informal exchange rate) are owed by taxpayers in Sancti Spíritus, if the figures presented Monday by the Sancti Spiritus newspaper Escambray are accurate. The official newspaper doesn’t state it that way, but this is the sum of the various audits carried out by the National Office for Tax Administration (Onat), understood to have occurred in recent months, although a time frame is not specified.
On the one hand, 2,050 “actions” were carried out—which Escambray describes as the “minimal” among the 16,500 taxpayers registered in the province—”primarily on businesses dedicated to imports, showing signs of substantial profits, maintaining high sales levels, or located in places with a significant influx of people.”
The inspections revealed what the provincial newspaper calls an “undeniable truth”: “absolutely all those inspected underreported,” and they owe 163.5 million pesos (more than $400,000 at the informal exchange rate).
The reasons given by these “non-compliant” taxpayers, listed by Escambray, range from “ignorance” to paying taxes on profits and not on gross income.
The reasons given by these “non-compliant” taxpayers, as listed by Escambray, range from “ignorance” of paying taxes on profits rather than gross income, to “accounting difficulties,” “lack of control over sales,” “rising raw material prices,” and the “high dollar exchange rate on the black market.”
Without specifying whether this is part of the newly discovered debt or an older one, the Sancti Spiritus newspaper reports that ONAT has collected more than 132 million pesos from debtors, but still has a list of another 2,700 taxpayers with late payments, totaling more than 128 million pesos.
Other taxpayers, more than 2,400 says Escambray, were “verified” to confirm their fiscal bank accounts. This inspection resulted in “dozens of fines” for those who “have not opened or used this payment instrument and have failed to comply with their obligation to deposit their sales proceeds in the bank, as well as to accept online payments, which are greatly in demand by customers today due to the cash shortages in branches.”
On the other hand, ONAT found around thirty MSMEs* with “declared losses” that nevertheless owed 600,000 pesos, and, at the same time, “it is in the process of verifying a group of 2024 tax returns where significant under-declarations have been found, so far estimated at almost 30 million pesos.”
No one in the province has received a prison sentence, and only one person has received three years of correctional labor without confinement
All of this added up to almost 300 million pesos, which, if added to the more than 43.5 million pesos owed by 164 taxpayers who were prohibited from leaving the country for tax evasion, the total amounts to more than 365 million calculated in the first paragraph.
If the debt is large, however, the consequences don’t seem so. Initially, the National Tax Agency (ONAT) requires debtors to pay what they owe plus a surcharge and a fine. If they fail to comply with this penalty, “they move on to the so-called enforcement procedure, and if they definitively fail to cover their debts, they can even be taken to court for the crime of tax evasion.”
Fewer than a dozen people have been forced to use this method, according to Escambray, and only three of them “have had complaints filed against them.” Of the rest, some were closed “because they paid the money,” and others remain pending. No one in the province has received a prison sentence, and only one person has received three years of non-confinement correctional labor.
‘Regulation’ appears to be the most widely used sanction, and quite effective, judging by the data: 194 taxpayers had their penalties lifted, after being charged a total of approximately 128.5 million pesos. Half of the “under-filers” pay what they owe within the established timeframe, according to Escambray, while the majority of the other half remain in the “negotiation process.”
And all this, taking into account that Sancti Spíritus is, according to its provincial newspaper, “among the best provinces in the country in terms of the quantity and effectiveness of fiscal control actions.”
Behind citizens’ lack of awareness when it comes to fulfilling their obligations to the State are citizens’ distrust of institutions and the lack of transparency in explaining how public funds are spent. The authorities limit themselves to providing percentages of large budget allocations, without even detailing them by ministry. In addition, discontent is generated by the large sums allocated to the government’s currently unproductive activities, such as hotel construction, among others, reinforces citizens’ lack of conscience when it comes to fulfilling their obligations to the State.
*Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises, mipyme in Spanish
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