Módulos: what they are and why fewer trades fit each year
The flat-rate regime everyone calls the módulos (Estimación Objetiva, in the name the legislation gives it) works out your taxable profit from signs and indices — floor area, staff, vehicles, installed power — and not from what you actually earned. That is both its charm and its trap: if you invoice above what the module assumes, it comes out cheap; if the year goes badly, you pay tax on a profit you never made.
The regime has been narrowing for years. The list of trades that may use it keeps shrinking, and the turnover and purchasing limits that let you stay in keep coming down, with extensions approved one tax year at a time. That is why you will find no figure here: the thresholds are revised, and publishing a stale one would be worse than publishing none. What we can tell you is how your own case is checked against the order currently in force and against your own figures for last year.
The counterpart deserves naming too, because it is why the regime still has defenders. Inside the módulos the bookkeeping is light and the figure is predictable: you know in January roughly what the year will cost you in tax, which for a trade with thin margins is not a small thing. The argument for leaving is never that the regime is bad in itself, it is that your own numbers have stopped fitting inside it.
Exclusion is determined by the previous year's magnitudes, so whoever goes over a threshold in December does not find out in December: they find out in January, already outside the regime and supposed to be keeping books under the direct-assessment regime. Checking this before the year closes is half an hour that saves a whole tax year set up the wrong way.
Leaving the módulos, by choice or by force
You may opt out, and sometimes that is the better move: anyone with genuinely high costs — a unit, a financed lorry, staff on the payroll — usually pays less under direct assessment. But opting out is not a revolving door: it binds you for a minimum period and it drags VAT along with it, because leaving the módulos for income tax normally means leaving the simplified VAT scheme too and moving to the ordinary one, with its quarterly Modelo 303.
The other way out is the forced one, by exceeding the limits, and that one is not chosen. Either way the bookkeeping changes, the instalment payments change and what you have to keep changes. We cover it in self-employed in Spain and, if you are just starting, in registering as self-employed.
Farming has a VAT scheme of its own
There is a great deal of farmland in this province, and agricultural VAT works differently. The special scheme for agriculture, livestock and fishing requires neither charging VAT nor filing periodic returns: whoever buys from the farmer pays a flat-rate compensation on top of the price, and the farmer keeps that instead of deducting the VAT borne on purchases. It sounds comfortable and often is, but it stops being comfortable the moment there is heavy investment — irrigation, machinery, solar panels — because that input VAT is then never recovered.
There are also activities that fall outside the special scheme, such as certain processing of the produce, and holdings that combine farming with an ancillary business. There the decision to join or opt out is taken with the numbers on the table, not by family habit.
Who writes to us from Albacete
| Who | What they end up needing |
|---|---|
| Self-employed tradesman with his own premises | Checking whether he is still inside the módulos, and whether staying in suits him |
| Haulier with a financed vehicle | Depreciation, business use of the vehicle and the VAT on fuel |
| Farmer with a family holding | The special agricultural scheme, the flat-rate compensation and what happens when he invests in irrigation or machinery |
| Workshop or shop with one employee | Modelo 111 for payroll withholding, and Modelo 115 if the premises are rented |
| Professional invoicing companies abroad | Registration in the ROI, the Spanish register of intra-EU traders, and where the service is taxed, which is not always Spain |
Working with Albacete, remotely
At a fixed fee and with no travelling. Invoices and bank statements go into your folder as you receive them, we hand back the figures explained, and we file. If the year has gone badly and the bill cannot be paid in one go, the instalment arrangement is requested inside the voluntary payment period, which is when it costs least and keeps the enforcement surcharge away: you have it in deferring or paying a debt in instalments.
We promise no results. We tell you which regime works out better on your own numbers, what risk each option carries, and what you would need to be able to prove if you were asked.
An Albacete haulier out of the módulos, with the numbers
A self-employed driver with a financed lorry of his own, working for two local agencies, who has moved to simplified direct assessment, the regime where tax is paid on real income less real costs, either by giving up the módulos or because he no longer fitted them. Sample annual figures, excluding VAT:
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Haulage invoiced | 78,000 € |
| Diesel and tolls | −24,000 € |
| Repairs and tyres | −5,000 € |
| Vehicle insurance | −3,500 € |
| Interest on the lorry loan | −4,500 € |
| Self-employed social security contribution | −3,600 € |
| Depreciation of the lorry under the official table | −12,000 € |
| Phone, tachograph, accountant and sundries | −1,400 € |
| Net income | 24,000 € |
| Prepayments for the year (Modelo 130) | 4,800 €, 20 % of the net income |
| VAT payable (Modelos 303) | 9,996 €: 16,380 charged less 6,384 paid on diesel, garage and sundries |
Under the simplified regime a provision for hard-to-document expenses is still deducted from that income, at the percentage and cap set by the rules for the year. And what changes most compared with the módulos is not the tax bill: it is that a bad year is now taxed as a bad year, but also that books must be kept, every diesel receipt filed and VAT reconciled quarter by quarter.
The year the lorry is bought, the sum is different. The VAT on the purchase is deducted in that quarter's 303 and it normally produces a refund; that balance is carried forward against the following quarters and can only be paid out in the fourth-quarter return, unless you are on the monthly refund register. Depreciation starts when the lorry goes into service, not when the loan is signed, and the interest is deducted as it accrues, not the whole loan instalment.
An Albacete haulier's calendar
| Month | What is filed |
|---|---|
| December | If you are giving up the módulos for the following year, you notify it now on Modelo 036, the census return, or by filing the first prepayment under direct assessment on time |
| January | 303 and 130 for the fourth quarter, by the 30th; 390 annual VAT summary |
| 1 to 20 April, July and October | 303 and 130 for each quarter; 111 if you employ a driver |
| April to June | Income tax return, with the prepayments subtracted |
Modelo 130 explained box by box is in Modelo 130 for the self-employed, and if you want us to handle your quarters, tell us about your business in the self-employed form.
This is what almost nobody in Albacete asks, and it later proves expensive. When you change lorries and sell the old one to another haulier, the sale carries an invoice with VAT, because the vehicle was used in the business. And for income tax it is not just another business receipt: it is a capital gain or loss, calculated by subtracting from the price the purchase cost less the depreciation already deducted. A heavily depreciated lorry sold at a good price leaves a gain nobody expected. Selling it "off the books" does not make it disappear: it turns it into a problem for the day the transfer recorded at Tráfico, the Spanish vehicle registry, is matched against your return.