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VAT practical manual 2022.

General rule

The provision of services will be taxed by Spanish VAT according to the following criteria:

  1. When the recipient is a businessman or professional and the headquarters of his economic activity is located in the territory of application of the Tax, or has a permanent establishment or the place of his domicile or habitual residence there, provided that it concerns services that have by recipients to said headquarters, permanent establishment, domicile or habitual residence, regardless of where the provider of the services is established and the place from which they provide them.

  2. When the recipient is not a businessman or professional, as long as the services are provided by a businessman or professional and the headquarters of his economic activity or permanent establishment from which he provides them or the place of his domicile or habitual residence is located in the territory. of tax application.

By way of exception, the services listed below are not subject to Spanish VAT when the recipient of the services is an individual and is established or has his domicile or habitual residence outside the Community, unless he is established or has his domicile or habitual residence in the Canary Islands, Ceuta or Melilla:

  1. Assignments and concessions of copyrights, patents, licenses, trademarks and other intellectual or industrial property rights, as well as any other similar rights.

  2. The transfer or granting of goodwill, purchase or sale exclusive rights or the right to carry out a professional activity.

  3. The advertising ones.

  4. Those of advice, audit, engineering, study office, lawyer, consultants, accounting or tax experts and other similar, with the exception of those included in number 1 of section One of article 70 of the VAT Law.

  5. Those for data processing and the provision of information, including procedures and experiences of a commercial nature.

  6. Those for translation, correction or composition of texts, as well as those provided by interpreters.

  7. Insurance, reinsurance and capitalization, as well as financial services, mentioned respectively by article 20, section One, numbers 16 and 18, of the VAT Law, including those that are not exempt, with the exception of rental of safe deposit boxes.

  8. Those for the transfer of personnel.

  9. Dubbing of movies.

  10. Leases of tangible movable property, with the exception of those whose purpose is any means of transport and containers.

  11. The provision of access to natural gas networks, located in the territory of the Community or to any network connected to such networks, to the electricity and heating or cooling networks, and transport or distribution through such networks, as well as as the provision of other services directly related to any of the services included in this letter.

  12. The obligations not to provide, totally or partially, any of the services listed in this number.

Headquarters of economic activity:

It will be located in the territory where the businessman or professional centralizes the management and normal exercise of his activity.

For the purposes of determining the place where services are provided, the headquarters of its economic activity will be the place where the company's central administration functions are carried out. To determine this, the place where fundamental decisions related to the general management of the company are made, the registered office and the place where management meets will be taken into account. When these criteria do not allow us to determine with certainty the place where the headquarters of the economic activity are located, the criterion that will prevail is the place where the fundamental decisions related to the general management of the company are made.

A simple postal address cannot be considered the seat of economic activity.

Permanent establishment:

A permanent establishment is considered any fixed place of business where entrepreneurs or professionals carry out economic activities. In particular, management headquarters, branches, offices, mines, quarries, certain construction, installation or assembly works, agricultural, forestry or livestock operations, real estate exploited under lease or by other title, etc. will be considered as such.

In the case of leases of properties located in the territory of application of the Tax whose owners are subjects not established therein, it will be considered that said owners do not have a permanent establishment in the aforementioned territory when they do not have their own staff to manage these leases.

For the purposes of determining the place of performance of the provision of services, permanent establishment will be understood as any establishment, other than the headquarters of economic activity, that is characterized by a sufficient degree of permanence and an adequate structure in terms of human and technical resources. that allow you to receive and use the services that are provided for the needs of said establishment or that allow you to provide the services that it supplies.

The fact of having a VAT NIF will not be sufficient as such to consider that a taxable person has a permanent establishment in the State that has attributed said NIF .