Tax and accounting in Burgos

The vehicle: what the statute says and what you can prove

For VAT purposes the statute presumes that passenger cars are only partly used for the business, and it admits evidence to the contrary in both directions: the taxpayer can establish a higher degree of business use and the administration can establish a lower one. For certain vehicles — goods vehicles, industrial vehicles, those of commercial representatives — the presumption is different and more favourable.

In IRPF, the Spanish personal income tax, the approach is not the same, and this is where the most repeated confusion lives: to deduct the running costs and the depreciation of a vehicle under direct assessment the law requires exclusive use for the activity, without the partial split VAT allows. The same car can therefore give a right to deduct part of the input VAT and nothing at all in income tax. It is not a contradiction: they are two taxes with two rules.

Depreciating the warehouse, the machine and the lorry

Fixed assets are not deducted in the year they are bought: they are depreciated across their useful life, using the coefficients in the tables set out in the corporate income tax rules, to which the personal income tax rules refer for direct assessment. There are accelerated depreciation regimes and cases of free depreciation, each conditional on specific requirements and amended frequently, so we check the ones in force for your year rather than last year's.

With a building there is also a rule people forget: land is not depreciated, only the construction is. And in letting there is a minimum depreciation, which is taken into account when the gain is computed on the day you sell even if it was never actually deducted. That is why so many sales come out with a larger gain than expected, and it is set out in I have sold a property in Spain.

A practical point follows from all of this: the depreciation schedule is a document, not a sum you redo each spring. It records what each asset cost, which part of that cost is land where the asset is a building, the date it came into service, the coefficient applied and how much is left to write down. Built once and kept current, it answers most of what a review asks about fixed assets; reconstructed years later from bank statements, it rarely does.

International transport and VAT

In transport, VAT depends on where the service is treated as supplied, and for a business customer in another member state the general rule takes the transaction to the customer's country under the reverse charge: you invoice without Spanish VAT and report it on Modelo 349, the recapitulative statement of intra-EU transactions. There are also exemptions of their own for transport connected with exports and imports, each with its own requirements and paperwork.

The practical consequence for a business here with customers abroad is that Modelo 349 stops being a curiosity and becomes a monthly or quarterly routine, and that it has to reconcile with Modelo 303, the quarterly VAT return. When it does not, the discrepancy appears on its own. The place-of-supply rules are laid out in where each service is taxed.

Who writes to us from Burgos

Activity	What lands on the table
A self-employed haulier with one or two lorries	Depreciation, diesel, tolls and the VAT on international carriage
A workshop or a small industrial business	Machinery, useful life and which depreciation regime fits
A sales representative with their own vehicle	Partial business use in VAT against exclusive use in income tax
A company with a rented warehouse	The Modelo 115 withholding and the annual summary
Somebody buying a second-hand warehouse or machine	Acquisition value, VAT or transfer tax, and the depreciation schedule

Our way of working in Burgos

With the depreciation schedule built from the outset and reviewed every year, which is what prevents the unpleasant surprise on the day of the sale. We keep the books ourselves and we show them to you: if you cannot see where a figure comes from, it has been explained badly.

And we flag what is risky. The deduction of a dual-use vehicle is among the most reviewed items in this sector: we apply it where there is evidence to hold it up, and we tell you in writing where the edge of the defensible position is. What we will not tell you is that a deduction is safe, because that depends on evidence and on whoever reads it, not on us.

A lorry and a car in Burgos: what each one lets you deduct

Take a self-employed haulier in Burgos who runs freight with a rigid lorry and who, to visit clients and the offices of the factories on the industrial estate, uses a car that also takes the children to school. The year's purchases and what each one allows him to deduct:

Cost	Net amount	Input VAT	Deductible VAT	For income tax
Rigid lorry	95,000 €	19,950 €	19,950 €	Depreciation according to the tables
Lorry diesel	18,000 €	3,780 €	3,780 €	18,000 €
Car in mixed use	28,000 €	5,880 €	2,940 €, under the 50 % presumption	Nothing, unless used exclusively
Car diesel	3,600 €	756 €	378 €	Nothing, unless used exclusively

The lorry is a goods vehicle and goes in whole for both taxes. The car does not: for VAT it is presumed to be half used for the business, and more can be proved; for income tax, unless it is used exclusively for the business, it neither depreciates nor deducts fuel. The 3,318 € of VAT on the car is deducted; the rest of its cost stays out. The lorry's rate is checked in the tables in force, and for heavier vehicles it is also worth checking whether the partial refund of the tax on professional diesel applies, which is a separate channel from VAT.

The calendar of a Burgos haulier

Form	What it covers	Deadline
303, and 130 or 131 depending on whether he is taxed on actual figures or under módulos (the flat-rate system)	VAT and the income tax advance	1 to 20 April, July and October; the fourth quarter until 30 January
349	Freight invoiced to companies in other EU member states	The same months, with the fourth quarter until 30 January
111	Withholding on the employed driver's wages	1 to 20 of the month after each quarter
390, 190 and 347	Annual summaries and transactions with third parties	January; the 347, in February

Where each haulage service is deemed to be supplied, and when it goes without Spanish VAT, is in where each service is taxed.

If the haulier is under módulos and the simplified VAT regime, the lorry still matters: the VAT paid on fixed assets is deducted separately, in the return for the last quarter of the year, and the vehicle's depreciation reduces the income resulting from the módulos according to the regime's own table. That is why a purchase in January and another in December can have very different cash effects even when the amount is the same.