What are civil companies?

Types of partnerships

They are associative entities that may have a commercial or civil nature. Civil companies may even have the commercial form of a general partnership or a simple limited partnership.

On the other hand, they may or may not have legal personality, depending on whether their agreements are made public or remain secret between the partners. Thus, in accordance with the provisions of article 1,669 of the Civil Code, a civil company has legal personality provided that the agreements between its partners are not secret. The partnership requires the will of its partners to act before 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, in order to be considered as taxpayers of Corporate Tax, civil companies must be incorporated by public deed or by 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 General Regulation of the actions and procedures of tax management and inspection and development of the common rules of the procedures for the application of taxes, approved by Royal Decree 1065/2007, of July 27. Only in such cases will the entity be considered to have legal personality for tax purposes.