Taxpayers

Regulation: Article 7 LIS

Taxpayers will be taxed on their worldwide income , that is, on all the income they earn, regardless of where it was produced and regardless of the residence of the payer.

The Tax regulations establish that taxpayers of this Tax will be referred to indistinctly and abbreviated by the names companies or entities, terms that will also be used throughout this Practical Manual.

They are taxpayers of Tax when they have their residence in Spanish territory:

1. With legal status

All types of entities are included, regardless of their form or name, except civil companies that do not have a commercial purpose.

Civil companies with legal personality and commercial purpose

For tax periods beginning on or after 1 January 2016, civil companies with legal personality and commercial purpose are no longer subject to income attribution and are now taxpayers of the Corporate Tax.

In this regard, the General Directorate of Taxes has established in numerous consultations the necessary requirements for civil companies to be considered taxpayers of Corporate Tax. Specifically, it considers that it is necessary to determine, firstly, in which cases a civil company is considered to acquire, from the point of view of Corporate Tax, legal personality and, secondly, to establish what is to be understood by commercial purpose.

Regarding the first question, in accordance with the provisions of article 1669 of the Civil Code, the civil company has legal personality provided that the agreements between its partners are not secret. Civil society therefore requires a willingness on the part of its members to act towards third parties as an entity. No specific solemnity is required for its constitution, but it is necessary that the agreements not be secret. Translating the above into the tax area, it can be concluded that in order to be considered a taxpayer of Corporate Tax, it is necessary for the civil society to have declared itself as such before the tax authorities. For this reason, for the purposes of being considered as taxpayers of the Corporate Tax, civil companies must be incorporated in public deed or in private document, provided that in the latter case, said document has been submitted to the Tax Authority for the purposes of assigning the tax identification number of legal persons and entities without legal personality, in accordance with article 24.2 of the RGAT. Only in such cases will the entity be considered to have legal personality for tax purposes.

Additionally, consideration as a taxpayer of the Corporate Tax requires that the civil society has a commercial purpose. For these purposes, a commercial purpose shall be understood as the performance of an economic activity of production, exchange or provision of services for the market in a sector not excluded from the commercial scope. Therefore, entities engaged in agricultural, livestock, forestry, mining, fishing and professional activities, to which Law 2/2007 on professional companies applies, will be excluded from being taxpayers of Corporate Tax, since these activities are outside the commercial sphere.

Entities with legal personality include, among others:

Public limited companies, limited liability companies, collective companies, labor companies, etc.
State, regional, provincial and local societies.
Cooperative societies and agricultural transformation societies.
Sole proprietorship companies.
Economic interest groups.
European economic interest groupings.
Associations, foundations and institutions of all kinds, both public and private.
Public entities (State Administrations, Administration of the Autonomous Communities, Local Corporations, Autonomous Organizations, etc.).

2. Without legal status

The following entities are included in this section:

Investment funds.
Temporary business associations that meet certain requirements regulated by Law 18/1982, of May 26, on the tax regime of groups and temporary unions of companies and regional industrial development companies.
Venture capital funds and closed-end collective investment funds.
Pension funds.
Mortgage market regulation funds.
Securitization funds.
Investment guarantee funds.
Communities holding the title of communal woodlands.
Bank Asset Funds.
In accordance with the Article 6.2 of the LIS, entities under the income attribution regime located in Spanish territory that give rise to the hybrid asymmetry established in section 12 of article 15. bis of the LIS (with effect from 1 January 2022), regarding certain incomes.