That the State — or any creditor — should collect what it is rightfully owed is correct. But the State should not be the only one able to collect quickly; private creditors should be able to as well. Beyond that, there is no denying that the judicial collection system is so slow and so congested that it ends up rewarding the bad payer, the calculating evader, and anyone who has learned to hide behind institutional backlog. That is not fair, and it does real damage to citizens' confidence in the political system. And when I say it is not fair, I mean not only to the public treasury, but also to the taxpayers who do comply, who do file, who do pay, and who watch others turn the system's inefficiency into a competitive advantage. Again: not only with respect to debts owed to the State, but to all debts.
The debate, then, should not be framed as collect or don't collect. That is not the real dilemma. The right question is a different one: how to build a faster and more effective collection mechanism without sacrificing basic guarantees along the way, and without striking the fraudster and the legitimate business with equal force.
The government's aim of moving collection into the administrative venue springs from a legitimate concern and from common international practice, at least among OECD countries. There are debts that cannot go on sleeping for years in interminable case files while the judicial apparatus drowns in its own slowness. Non-compliance cannot be a reasonable bet for the fraudster.
But correcting a structural weakness is one thing; replacing it with an unbalanced model, in which the concentration of power in the Administration ends up weakening the taxpayer even before the debt has been established with sufficient rigour, is quite another. That is where the risk lies. And that risk should not be played down.
Not every case is the same. The taxpayer who files and does not pay is not in the same position as one against whom a debt is assessed following a complex, technical and often debatable process. The habitual evader is not the same as the company that disagrees, on reasonable grounds, with a tax adjustment. Lumping them all together would be a serious mistake. It would be making the innocent pay for the guilty. And when that happens, the signals the productive sector receives are not of order and legal certainty, but of fear, arbitrariness and distrust.
Not rejecting the reform — improving it The solution, then, is not to reject reform altogether, but to improve it. To make it smarter, better balanced and more compatible with a rule-of-law state that must collect, yes, but without abusing its power.
First, payment arrangement alternatives must be genuinely strengthened. If the goal is to raise revenue, it makes more sense to open realistic paths for taxpayers to regularize their position than to push them, without distinction, over the cliff of attachment. A modern system is measured not only by its capacity to punish, but also by its capacity to resolve. Facilitating reasonable agreements, flexible schemes and early exits can produce better outcomes for the treasury and less destruction of economic activity.
Second, guarantees must be preserved. If collection is to migrate to an administrative venue, safeguards equivalent to those that exist in court today must be preserved. It cannot be accepted that, in the name of efficiency, disproportionate measures become routine or powers are expanded without sufficient controls. Speed cannot become an excuse for weakening the right of defence — consider, for example, precautionary attachment for a period of two years.
Third, alternative means of resolving disputes at the assessment stage should be made available. Above all, there is one substantive improvement the country should dare to discuss: allowing the controversy over the quantum debeatur — that is, over how much is actually owed — to be resolved before the process has fully run its course, through a specialized arbitral tribunal.
That is where the real innovation may lie, and it is already the norm in many OECD countries: allowing differences over the interpretation or application of the rules to be settled through amicable or arbitral procedures during the administrative phase. Such is the case in the United States (IRS Fast Track Settlement), the United Kingdom (HMRC Alternative Dispute Resolution), the Netherlands (mediation and settlement agreements with the Belastingdienst) and Chile (mediation before the Taxpayer Ombudsman in certain disputes arising during audits or in pre-litigation administrative proceedings).
If a serious discrepancy arises during an audit between the Administration and the company over the amount claimed, there should be a possibility of taking that difference, before the final stretch of the conflict, to a technical, independent and expeditious arbitral forum. A neutral third party could weigh the arguments, refine the adjustment, uphold what is well founded and discard what does not hold up. To prevent abuse or delaying tactics, a taxpayer choosing that route could deposit a percentage of the disputed amount as security in the event of losing the arbitration.
That design would have several virtues at once. It would discourage litigation, speed up the resolution of genuine disputes, give the State a concrete guarantee of collection, and at the same time prevent entire companies from being trapped for years in proceedings whose core was, precisely, a technical discussion that could have been resolved earlier, better and with less attrition.
Many cases would then never have to reach the courts. And those that did would be fewer. Revenue collection would win. Legal certainty would win. And ultimately, so would trust in our institutions.
Costa Rica needs to close the gaps that today allow some to take advantage of the system's slowness. But it also needs to remember that the strength of a tax administration is measured not only by its capacity to collect, but by its capacity to distinguish. To distinguish between fraud and legitimate disagreement. Between wilful non-compliance and technical controversy. Between necessary firmness and unnecessary excess.
Collect better, yes. Collect faster, too. But collect with balance.