Payment facilities

• Two instructions from the Tax Collection Department, together with the increase to 50,000 euros by Ministerial Order of the limit exempt from guarantees, will benefit more than 750,000 taxpayers
• Automated deferral grants will be resolved at the time of the application with maximum periods of 24 months for individuals and 12 for legal entities, double that until now.
• The maximum terms for applications with bank guarantees go from 36 to 60 months, and for urban properties without encumbrances they go from 24 to 36 months.
• All changes will be effective for applications submitted from April 15.

April 5, 2023 .- The Tax Agency will make debt payment deferrals more flexible to facilitate taxpayers' liquidity. The combination of the Ministerial Order that increases the limit exempt from providing guarantees from 30,000 to 50,000 euros and two instructions that develop the scheme to be applied from now on will allow for more payment terms to be offered to taxpayers in a wide range of situations.

The potential beneficiaries of these measures, estimated at more than 750,000 taxpayers, are generally individuals and legal entities. The new rules for deferrals will apply to applications submitted on or after April 15, the date on which the Ministerial Order comes into force.

Double the maximum period for automated requests

The new deferral instruction significantly extends the maximum payment periods for automated processing applications, which are exempt from providing guarantees. For individuals, the maximum terms are increased from 12 to 24 months, and for legal entities, from 6 to 12 months.

In turn, by extending the scope of application of the automated system with exemption from guarantees from 30,000 to 50,000 euros, there will be many more cases in which the taxpayer will be able to benefit from an almost instantaneous granting of their deferral, thus minimising the indirect processing costs for the citizen.

After submitting the application through the app or the electronic office of the Tax Agency, the file is resolved in a matter of seconds. If the applicant has subscribed to the Agency's notification system, he/she will be sent an immediate notification with the resolution of the application via push notification in the app itself, by email to the address provided or by SMS to the mobile phone number provided.

Other improvements

The flexibility of the deadlines also applies to cases where deferral requests exceed 50,000 euros and therefore require the provision of guarantees. Thus, in cases where a bank guarantee or surety bond is provided, the maximum terms increase from 36 to 60 months, while if the guarantee provided is an urban property without encumbrances, the maximum terms increase from 24 to 36 months.

With the same objective of increasing flexibility, the limit for exceptional cases in which the established general maximum periods may be exceeded, subject to prior authorisation, has been extended from 48 to 60 months.

In turn, it will be permitted to accept as collateral urban real estate that does have previous encumbrances when, discounting these encumbrances, the amount exceeds 115% of the debt. In the preliminary investigation, as a general rule, these assets were not accepted as collateral.

The instruction on deferral guarantees also incorporates the novelty that the guarantee provided by a principal debtor, if sufficient, equally benefits those declared responsible for derivations of liability and those jointly obligated to pay the debt.