Spain: VAT obligations and the COVID-19 crisis

Subject to any changes that may result from the new expected legislative and administrative measures, the existing situation as regards the Spanish VAT obligations of non-resident companies operating in the Spanish territory, is as follows:

Dead-lines: The second and third additional provisions of Royal Decree 463/2020 of 14 March, published at Official Gazette of the 14^th March) declaring the estate of alarm due to the sanitary crisis of the COVID-19 (the Royal Decree) contemplates a general interruption in the calculation of the dead-lines of all on-going judicial and administrative procedures. The interruption will last all the initial duration of the Royal Decree (15 days since publication) and any eventual extension of the same.

This would affect all existing procedures before the tax management and tax collection offices, tax inspections, administrative and Court claims.

Although there are opinions favourable, in this moment it is not clear  that the same can be said of the dead-lines of the VAT returns and other formal obligations (SII VAT registers and informative returns) so companies should work with the hypothesis that no change are produced in this field (the fact subsequently commented supports this view),

These measures apply in all the Spanish territory (including those Autonomous Regions with tax specialities: Canary Islands, Country Vasque, Navarra, Ceuta and Melilla).

Optional Extraordinary postponement: Conditioned to the filing of the corresponding application, article 14 of Royal Law-Decree 7/2020 of 12 March, published at Official Gazette of the 13^th March) adopting economic measures to answer the impact of the COVID-19 in the economy (the Royal Law-Decree), contemplates some specialities as regards the postponement regime of those tax debts which dead-lines for filing and payment occur between the 13rd of March and the 30^th of May. So to benefit of the specialties the following conditions need to be met:

• The applicant must be a small company (turnover under 6 million Euros). For the purposes of calculation only the transactions for which the company is a Spanish VAT taxable subject must be considered. In our opinion, unless related to a VAT permanent establishment in Spain sales eligible for the reverse charge rule should not be considered for the determination of said threshold. 

• The tax debt cannot exceed from 30,000 Euros.

The specialities introduced by the Royal Law-Decree as regards the standard postponement regime are the following:

• The postponement is not dependent of the lack of cash-flow of the company and is automatically granted por a period of 6 months. 

• Postponement of withholding taxes, VAT quotas and payments on account of the Corporate tax is possible. 

• The first 3 months are free of late payment interests (3.750%).

These measures are not appliable in the territories of those Autonomous Regions fully competent for the management and collection of taxes (Canary Islands, Country Vasque, Navarra, Ceuta and Melilla) and which will have to regulate their own specialities.

In any case postponement applications following the general postponement regime would be possible in any case.