Shunt active power filters are devices, connected in parallel with nonlinear and reactive loads, which are in charge of compensating these characteristics in order to assure the quality of the distribution network. This paper analyzes the dynamics of a dc bus split-capacitor boost converter used as an active filter and proposes a control system which guarantees the desired closedloop performance (unity power factor and load-current harmonics and reactive-power compensation). The proposed controller is hierarchically decomposed into two control loops, one in charge of shaping the network current and the other in charge of assuring the power balance. Unlike previous works that appeared in the literature, both control loops are analytically tuned. This paper describes the analytical design of the controller and presents some experimental results that show the good performance of the closedloop system.