Four different things people call a letter from the tax office
| What it is | What it means | Usual deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Warning letter | Informative. It does not open a procedure. You can still regularise yourself, with a surcharge instead of a penalty | No deadline, but the clock is running |
| Request for information | They want data or documents. This does open a procedure | 10 working days |
| Limited review or data verification | They are checking a specific item and can end by assessing | 10 working days to make representations |
| Opening of an inspection | The widest procedure. Nothing is improvised here | As set in the communication |
While there is only an informative letter, there has been no formal request: you can file yourself and pay a surcharge instead of a penalty. It is the last cheap window and most people let it close, assuming it no longer makes any difference. It makes a very large difference, and the arithmetic is on filing late.
The real deadline, which is shorter than it looks
Two clocks run in sequence and almost nobody counts the first one:
- Electronic notification. If a document is made available in your electronic mailbox and you do not open it, it is deemed notified after ten calendar days. The period to answer starts from there, whether or not you have read it. Anyone who checks the mailbox every fortnight can find the period consumed before ever seeing the letter.
- The period to answer, usually ten working days: Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays do not count, but August does for most procedures — which surprises people who assume Spain stops in August. Some of it does. This does not.
Which is why the first thing we do when a client comes on is review their notifications and, if they authorise us, receive them on their behalf. For someone living abroad this matters more than anything else on this page: a letter can be served, answered by silence and assessed while you are in another country with no idea any of it happened.
What gets answered, and above all what does not
A request is answered with what they have asked for and only with what they have asked for. Volunteering more opens doors nobody had opened for you: every additional document is a further line of enquiry, and the procedure can be widened to whatever turns up.
- Identify the scope. The communication states which tax and which year are under review. Outside that, there is no obligation to provide anything.
- Always answer. Silence does not make a procedure go away: the administration assesses on whatever it holds, and can additionally penalise for obstruction.
- Ask for more time when it is needed. An extension of half the original period is granted if applied for before the first days have run, and it costs nothing to ask.
- Keep the acknowledgement. What was provided, and when, is half the defence if there is an argument later.
If it ends in an assessment
A proposed assessment is not the last word. The order is:
- Representations against the proposal, within the deadline, with the documents that support your version.
- A request for reconsideration, or an economic-administrative claim, against the assessment itself, within one month. They are alternatives: if you choose reconsideration, you have to wait for it to be decided before claiming.
- The penalty is separate. It is processed in its own file and challenged on its own. Accepting the assessment does not oblige you to accept the penalty, although some reductions depend on doing so and that should be calculated before deciding.
Agreeing reduces the penalty, and paying it without appealing reduces it again. On small penalties it is usually cheaper to pay than to fight; on large ones it is the other way round. It is an arithmetic question rather than a question of principle, and we do the arithmetic before recommending anything.
What these letters are usually about
Among the people we act for, the same handful of subjects account for most of the post. Non-resident owners are asked about rental income declared on form 210, or about years with no return at all where the property stood empty. Freelancers are asked to justify deducted costs, and almost always the answer turns on whether there is a complete invoice rather than on whether the cost was real. Recent arrivals are asked to prove which country they were resident in, which is a question about evidence gathered at the time. And anyone who has sold is asked about the works added to the purchase price, which we deal with on selling property.
None of those are hard questions if the file was kept. All of them are hard questions if it was not.
Your case, in two minutes
What applies to your tax office letter, in two minutes
The form for this service asks only what matters here. At the end you have your map of obligations, the deadlines running against you and a fixed price.
What your tax office letter costs
| Work | Price |
|---|---|
| Reading the file and telling you what has arrived | free |
| Answering a request for information | from 290 € |
| Representations against a proposed assessment | from 520 € |
| Reconsideration or economic-administrative claim | Fixed quote |
Taxes included. Send us the letter in full, with its date and its file number, and we will tell you the same day what it is and how long you have.
Before anything arrives: the file you should already have
Almost everything on this page becomes easy or impossible depending on decisions taken years earlier. The deeds, the invoices with a tax number on them, the bank statements showing who paid what, the certificates of withholding, the evidence of where you were living: none of it can be assembled after a request arrives, because a document created afterwards is worth very little.
The other half of it is access. Spanish tax notifications are electronic, and they are served whether or not anybody opens them. If you live abroad, the single most useful step is to put a formal authorisation in place so that somebody here receives them, reads them on the day and tells you. That is part of the recurring fee for our clients, and it is the reason most of our files never reach the assessment stage at all.
What we do when you send us one
- We identify the document and its scope: which tax, which year, which procedure, and what can follow from it. That is free, and it is usually answered the same day.
- We work out the real deadline, counting from the date of service rather than from the date you saw it, and we tell you whether an extension is worth asking for.
- We decide what is provided, and we say plainly where the file is weak, because that changes the strategy rather than the wording.
- We write the response and keep the acknowledgement, and we tell you at that point what the realistic range of outcomes is, including the bad one.
Questions we are asked about your tax office letter
Can I ignore it if I think it does not concern me? Not advisable. If the request is addressed to you, there is an obligation to attend to it even if the answer is that you have nothing to provide. Not answering allows an assessment on whatever data they hold and opens a possible penalty for obstruction.
They are asking for documents from five years ago. Check the limitation period first: the general period is four years from the end of the filing period. If the year is out of time, you answer saying so; you do not simply hand things over.
Can an inspection come out of this? It can. A limited review can be widened, or give way to an inspection, if something appears outside its scope. Which is the reason for providing what was asked for and nothing more.
What if the mistake was my previous adviser's? As against the tax office, you answer, because you are the taxpayer. Whether you can then claim against the professional is a separate matter, and it requires proof of the engagement, the error and the loss.
How long does it take to resolve? A limited review has a maximum period of six months; if that is exceeded it lapses, and what was done in it does not interrupt the limitation period. Keeping track of those periods is part of the work.