What kind of pension it is decides everything
Double taxation treaties follow the OECD model, and there two different articles deal with pensions. Article 18 covers private pensions and those derived from previous employment in the private sector, and as a general rule attributes them to the country where the recipient lives. Article 19 covers government service pensions, paid by a state or its bodies for services rendered to that state, and as a general rule leaves them taxable in the paying country.
That is why two neighbours on the same street, both retired from Switzerland, can end up in opposite positions: one is taxed here and the other there. And the distinction that confuses people most is that a foreign social security pension is not the same thing as a government service pension, even though a state body pays both. Each treaty drafts this in its own way, and the one that applies to your case has to be read, not the one belonging to a neighbouring country. The comparison is in public or private pension under the treaty.
Then the foreign pension goes into your IRPF return, the Spanish personal income tax return, as employment income, added to everything else. And if you had not been declaring it, it can be put right on your own initiative: the surcharges of article 27 of the Ley General Tributaria rise in bands according to the months of delay, but there is no penalty so long as no formal request has been made first. We handle it in filing late.
The certificate that unlocks the treaty
A treaty does not apply merely because it exists: you have to establish to the foreign payer where you are tax resident. That is done with a certificate of tax residence issued for treaty purposes, which is not the ordinary certificate and which many foreign administrations reject if the wrong one reaches them.
Without that document the payer withholds by default whatever its domestic rules require, which is usually more than the treaty allows. Until you send it you will keep receiving less than you should, and the certificate has a limited validity: it has to be renewed. It is in Spanish pensioners abroad, and the difference between the two certificates in the two certificates of tax residence.
Four years to reclaim what was over-withheld
If more has been withheld from you than the treaty permits, the excess can be reclaimed, and not only for the current year: the general limitation period in Spanish tax matters is four years, so it is usually possible to recover several years at once. The procedure is set by the country that withheld, and each has its own form, its own language and its own deadline; what Spain contributes is the certificate that supports the claim.
It is worth saying plainly: this is a slow process and the outcome depends on the foreign administration, not on us. What can be assured is that the claim is made properly and in time, not that a refund will arrive on a particular date.
One thing worth ordering early is the paperwork the foreign payer already holds: annual certificates of the sums paid and withheld, the correspondence setting out the legal basis of the pension, and any form filed before. These claims fail far more often for a missing document than for a wrong reading of the treaty.
Who writes to us from Ourense
| Who | What gets looked at |
|---|---|
| Retired from Switzerland with a house in the province | Which treaty article applies and whether the Swiss withholding is right |
| Retired from Germany and back in the village | Tax residence for the year and declaring the pension here |
| An emigrant in France keeping a flat here | Modelo 210 for imputed income, one return per property and per owner |
| A widow drawing pensions from two countries | Which country taxes what, and how double taxation is avoided |
| Children inheriting with assets abroad | Competence, the six-month deadline and foreign assets in the estate |
Working with Ourense, remotely
By reading the papers first, because in these cases they arrive in German, in French or on the form of a Swiss pension fund. Before we tell you anything we want to see the payer's certificate and the applicable treaty, since the right answer for one country is the wrong answer for another.
We work by email at a fixed fee, with no need for you to travel anywhere. If a letter from the tax office has arrived and you cannot tell what it is about, send it exactly as it came: the first thing is to see what deadline it opens, which is usually the only urgent part. Where a refund depends on a foreign administration we will say so from the start rather than let you expect a date we cannot promise.
A widow in Ourense with a Spanish pension and a Swiss one: does she have to file?
A woman from the area receives the Spanish widow's pension and a Swiss old-age pension for the years she worked there. She has never filed an income tax return, because "pensions don't have to be declared". Assuming the treaty gives Spain the right to tax the Swiss pension, which is the first thing checked, the sum is this:
| Situation | Spanish pension | Swiss pension (in euros) | Total | Obliged to file? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Her case | 9,800 € | 6,500 € | 16,300 € | Yes: two payers, and the second one exceeds 1,500 € |
| If the Swiss pension were 6,000 € | 9,800 € | 6,000 € | 15,800 € | No, below 15,876 € |
| If she only received the Spanish one | 16,300 € | — | 16,300 € | No: a single payer and below 22,000 € |
In Spain, employees and pensioners with modest income are released from filing, but the threshold drops when there is more than one payer. A second payer, and a foreign payer that withholds nothing in Spain, lower it to 15,876 €. And the Swiss pension is converted into euros at the exchange rate of each payment, not at a round year-end rate, so the total can land on either side of the limit by very little.
What it costs the Ourense pensioner to catch up in October 2026
| Return for the year | Its deadline ended | Position | Surcharge on the tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 30 June 2026 | Three full months late | 4 % |
| 2024 | 30 June 2025 | More than twelve months | 15 % plus interest |
| 2023 | 1 July 2024 | More than twelve months | 15 % plus interest |
| 2022 | 30 June 2023 | Open until mid-2027 | 15 % plus interest |
| 2021 | 30 June 2022 | Time-barred | Nothing |
All of it without a penalty, because the returns are filed before any formal request arrives. The tax for each year depends on that year's scale and deductions, and is calculated with the certificates on the table. If Switzerland withheld something the treaty did not allow it to, that is claimed there, separately. Which treaty rule taxes each type of pension is in public or private pension.
The calculation needs three papers per year: the certificate for the Spanish pension, the Swiss fund's annual certificate showing what was paid and what was withheld, if anything, and the bank statements where the payments arrived, which give the date of each payment for the exchange rate. With that, the open years are rebuilt and filed together, starting with the oldest, which is the first to stop being fixable without a penalty.
Many pensioners from Ourense keep the account where their wages used to be paid, with thirty years of savings. The interest it earns is taxed here, and if the balance exceeds 50,000 € there is Modelo 720, which is not a tax but a reporting obligation with its own deadline, from January to March. It usually surfaces when the Swiss bank reports the data to Spain under the automatic exchange of information; if it is filed first, the conversation is a different one. Start with the pensioners' form.