Alike in the envelope, not in their consequences
Both arrive by electronic notification, both ask for documents, both give a short deadline and both produce the same jolt. The difference is that one is a request for information and the other is the opening of a procedure that is going to end in a formal decision. And a decision closes things.
That is why the first thing we do when someone forwards us the letter is not to look at which documents are being asked for: it is to read the heading and work out what has been opened.
Telling them apart in thirty seconds
A notice opening a limited review says so. It names the procedure, identifies the tax and the period, defines the scope — what is going to be examined and what is not — and warns of the maximum duration of the procedure. It usually also sets out the consequences of ignoring it.
A request for information, by contrast, asks for documents or explanations without opening anything: it does not mention scope, it does not mention the duration of a procedure and it does not announce an assessment. It may be the step before something is opened, or it may come to nothing.
| Request for information | Limited review | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A request for data or supporting documents | A formal tax procedure |
| What the heading says | That documentation is required | That the procedure is being opened, with the tax, the period and the scope |
| Deadline to reply | Whatever it states, usually 10 working days | Whatever the notice states, and then 10 working days to make submissions on the proposal |
| Maximum duration | Not applicable | 6 months from the opening notice; beyond that it lapses |
| How it ends | With no formal act: filed away, or it turns into something else | With an express decision, with or without an assessment |
| What it closes | Nothing | The tax and period reviewed, subject to qualifications |
What a review closes and a request does not
Here is the advantage almost nobody sees, because everyone arrives thinking about defending themselves. When a limited review ends with a decision, the tax office cannot reassess the same subject matter again, unless in a later procedure it discovers new facts or circumstances arising from different actions. That closing effect is real and it has value: a year that has been reviewed and resolved stops being open, even if the limitation period still has years to run.
A request for information closes nothing. You can answer it, nothing further may happen, and the year remains reviewable until it is time-barred after four years. For that reason, in some cases — not all — it suits you better for the procedure to be opened and closed than to be left with a request for data and a door ajar.
It should also be said that the boundary of that closure is arguable: what counts as different actions has generated a good deal of litigation, and it is not prudent to rely on absolute protection. It is an advantage, not an amnesty.
The limits of a limited review
- It cannot examine commercial accounting records, unless the taxpayer volunteers them. Handing them over without thinking widens the playing field, and that is a decision to take calmly.
- It cannot require third parties to provide information about financial movements. It can ask you for your own statements to support what you declared, which is not the same thing.
- The work is normally done at the tax office, on the documents supplied. Nobody is coming to your home.
When a letter asks for things beyond those limits, the right answer is not a flat refusal: it is to answer what is properly asked and leave a record of the excess. That gets built into the file, and the file is what gets read later if an appeal becomes necessary.
Silence closes nothing: the tax office assesses on the information it already holds, which is usually worse for the taxpayer than what could have been supplied, and failing to answer a request is itself an infringement. On top of that there is how electronic notification works: once a document is placed in your official inbox it is treated as notified after ten calendar days, whether or not anyone opened it. A great many deadlines are lost without the taxpayer ever reading the letter. If you live abroad and your Spanish mailbox is a formality you never check, this is the paragraph to reread.
Within a limited review, before any assessment is issued, a proposal is notified with a period for submissions. That stage is where the outcome is decided, and it is the moment to supply what was missing and to argue the characterisation. Afterwards, an assessment can be challenged by way of reconsideration or an economic-administrative claim within one month, and any penalty runs as a separate file with its own defence.
The in-between case: A request for information or a limited review
The table has two columns and real life has four different envelopes. These are the other two, and they are worth recognising because they get confused with the first two constantly.
The data verification. It is a procedure, like a limited review, but far narrower: it is built for formal defects, arithmetical errors and discrepancies between what was declared and information the authorities already hold. It usually arrives with a proposed assessment already attached, without anything having been asked for first. Its closing effect is much weaker than that of a limited review: once a verification has ended, the same matter can be revisited in a later procedure. In the other direction, using it to settle questions beyond its scope — a complex legal characterisation, a trading activity — is among the defects most argued over in the courts. When a proposed assessment decides something substantive under that label, the first thing to look at is not the figure: it is whether the procedure was the right one.
The letter that asks for nothing. Every year informational communications go out flagging a possible discrepancy and inviting you to review your return, without demanding documents or opening a file. They are not requests for information, and the difference matters a great deal, because on it depends whether a later regularisation is still voluntary — surcharge, no penalty — or stops being so. It is contested ground and turns on the exact wording of each letter, so the working rule we apply is the cautious one: read it carefully, and if there really is something to correct, correct it now rather than waiting to see whether anything else arrives.
There is a further scenario that throws everybody: the request about somebody else. It reaches you as a person obliged to supply information about clients, suppliers, tenants or participants, not as a taxpayer under investigation. There is nothing to defend in your own return, but it does have to be answered, and answered while weighing what is handed over and on what basis, because there are limits to what can be asked for as well. Where the information sits abroad, or concerns people who do, that weighing is worth doing before the deadline rather than on the last afternoon.
What to look at before deciding on A request for information or a limited review
Everything decided in these files turns on six pieces of information printed on the first page of the letter, which almost nobody reads to the end:
- The date it was made available in the electronic mailbox and the date it was opened, because time runs from the first and not from the moment somebody looked at it. If nobody went in, it is treated as notified after ten calendar days. For anyone who spends months of the year out of Spain, this is the single most expensive line on the page.
- The tax and the period, exactly as printed. They determine what is being looked at and, if the procedure ends in a decision, what is thereby closed.
- The stated scope, where there is one: which elements of the obligation will be checked and which will not. That is the perimeter of the match.
- The office that signed it and the file number, which say where this has come from and to whom you should be addressing yourself.
- The time allowed and the day it expires, counted in working days. It is also worth knowing that an extension can be requested, granted where it is applied for within the first days of the period and nothing has been asked for before on the same step: a few more days are often the difference between answering well and answering fast.
- What was declared that year, with the filing receipt and the documents behind it. Before answering you need to know whether what was declared was right, because the strategy is not the same when you are defending something solid as when the job is to regularise.
And one more question, which is not on the letter: which other years remain open on the same point. Whatever is answered here will be read there.
What we do with A request for information or a limited review
We read the whole letter before touching a single document: which procedure it is, what scope it has, which tax and which period, what deadline is running and from when. That is what decides the strategy, and the strategy is not the same when the aim is to close the year as when the aim is to keep anything else from being opened.
Then it is answered with what is asked for and with what it suits you to supply, no more and no less, within the deadline and through the correct channel. We do not promise the assessment will come out at zero: what is within our control is that what is supplied is ordered and that no deadline is missed. It is on replying to the tax office, and the form asks for the notification date, which is the fact everything else depends on.