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Practical guide to 2020 Income Tax.

Rules for calculating modules

Regulations: instruction 7 for the application of the signs, indices or modules in the Personal Income Tax of Annex II of Order 1164/2019 of 22 November (Official State Gazette of 30 November) and rt. 11 of Royal Decree-Law 35 / 2020, of 22 December, on urgent measures to support the tourism, hospitality and trade and tax matters (Official State Gazette of 23).

In the Orders that develop the objective estimation method, a series of rules must be set that the taxpayer must apply to calculate the average of the signs, indices or modules relating to the entire period during which the activity was carried out during that calendar year, when any of the following circumstances occur during the financial year:

  • Start of the activity after 1 January of the calendar year.
  • Cessation of activity before 31 December of the calendar year.
  • The uninterrupted exercise of the activity (without this consideration of holiday periods).
  • There have been variations during the year in the amount of the variables or modules corresponding to the activity.

For 2020, in addition to the above circumstances, the incidence of the alarm states dropped during 2020 was taken into account, establishing the following rules for quantifying the number of units in the different modules:

1. The following shall not be counted, under any circumstances, as a period during which the activity was carried out:

  • During the first half of 2020, the days of the state of alarm declared during that six-month period (also applicable to activities that were declared essential).

    Note: The statement of the state of alarm to address the health emergency caused by the Covid-19 coronavirus carried out by Royal Decree 463 / 2020 of 14 March, covered with successive extensions from 14 March to 00: 00 on 21 June 2020. Therefore, the days on which the state of alarm was declared in the first half of 2020 were 99 days.

  • During the second half, days on which, if the state of alarm is declared, the actual exercise of the activity economic situation had been suspended as a result of the measures taken by the competent authority to correct the evolution of the epidemiological situation resulting from Covid-19 (also known as SARS-CoV-2).

2. In view of the above, the calculation of the average of the signs, indexes or modules will be determined:

  1. In the employee and "non-salaried" modules, depending on the hours worked, without counting the hours worked corresponding to the days referred to in number 1 above.

  2. In the "distance travelled" and "electricity consumption" modules, the following kilometres will be taken into account, respectively, or kilowatt/hour consumed, but the kilometres travelled and the kilowatt hours proportionally corresponding to the days referred to in number 1 above will not be counted.

  3. In all other cases, depending on the days of cash employment, use or installation, taking into account that they comprise the normal days of rest and holidays, since the amounts set out in the Order are annual. For this calculation, it will not be counted, under any circumstances, as a period during which the activity was carried out on the days referred to in number 1 above.

4. When the calculated average does not result in a whole number, it is expressed with two decimal figures.

Modules common to several activities : When there is partial use of a module in the activity or activity sector, the value to be calculated will be that resulting from its apportionment based on its effective use. If it is not possible to determine this, it will be attributed equally to each of the module's uses.