Ghost companies and tax collection in the province of Santa Elena, year 2021

Abstract

Introduction. The collection of taxes is one of the most important items for the state budget of Ecuador, however, there are factors that prevent optimal tax collection, one of the most used methods are ghost companies and all the alleged activities they conduct. Objective. Analyze the effect that ghost taxpayers have on tax collection in the province of Santa Elena, through the application of statistical data collection methods and techniques. Methodology. The research is quasi-experimental with a quantitative approach, of a descriptive-exploratory type, focused on establishing the level of influence that the ghost company variable has, through the impact evaluation method with propensity score matching (PSM), a database was used. obtained from the web portal of the Internal Revenue Service, with a population of eight ghost companies detected in Santa Elena. Results. Until the year 2021, the SRI reported that the ghost companies identified in Santa Elena had sales of approximately $9.7 million attributed to 135 clients, these companies in their filed returns reduced the total taxes by 82% with reference to the data real. Conclusion. Through the PSM impact test, it was found that these items would represent 0.05% of the total contributions of the province, the scarce application of control resolutions of the Internal Revenue Service prevent this type of company from identified in a timely manner, therefore, would complicate the effective collection of taxes.