The whole system of voluntary regularisation in Spain rests on a boundary one line long: if you move first, you pay a surcharge (the recargo); if the tax office moves first, you pay a penalty. That line is drawn by article 27 of the Ley General Tributaria, Spain's General Tax Act, with a precise definition of what a prior request (requerimiento previo) is. Knowing how to read it decides thousands of euros and, above all, decides whether you have to hurry today or not.
The definition, word by word
A prior request is any administrative action carried out with the formal knowledge of the taxpayer and directed at the acknowledgment, regularisation, review, inspection, securing or assessment of the tax debt. Three elements, and all three are needed:
- An administrative action. It has to come from the tax administration, not from a third party or from your own hunch.
- With formal knowledge. Properly notified to the taxpayer, not learned by chance or mentioned over the phone.
- Directed at one of the six purposes on the list. This is the decisive filter: the action has to be aimed at regularising, reviewing or assessing, not simply at informing.
What counts and what does not
| Action | Prior request? |
|---|---|
| Notice opening a limited review, the desk check run by letter | Yes |
| Notice opening a tax inspection | Yes |
| Request for tax-relevant information on that tax and period | Yes |
| Proposed provisional assessment | Yes |
| Warning letter from an information campaign, demanding nothing | No, not on its own |
| Message from the virtual assistant or a notice on the tax office website | No |
| Phone call without formal notification | No |
| Request concerning another tax or another period | No, for the period not covered |
Letters from warning campaigns do not open proceedings, demand nothing and usually state in their own text that they are not a request. Legally, they do not close the article 27 window. But in practice they mean the data has already been matched and is sitting in a file. Anyone who receives one and does nothing usually receives, months later, the communication that really is a request. The right reading is not "nothing is happening", it is "I have weeks left, not years".
Formal knowledge in an electronic mailbox
For those required to receive notifications electronically, and for those who have signed up voluntarily, a notification is treated as served when its content is accessed. And if it is not accessed, it is treated as refused once ten calendar days have passed since it was made available, so the procedure goes ahead anyway. In other words, not opening the mailbox does not keep the window open; it closes it without your knowing. The full calculation is in how the deadlines are really counted.
Hence a routine we always recommend: check your enabled electronic address (the official mailbox where tax notices are delivered), or have someone check it for you, and do so before starting any regularisation. Filing a late self-assessment on the same day the access period expired for an unread notification is the worst possible combination.
The boundary: tax and period
A request does not close the whole year or all your taxes. It closes what it refers to. If the tax authorities send you a request about IRPF (personal income tax) for 2023, IRPF for 2022 and 2024 remain open, and so does VAT. That is the window left, and it is where the strategy is played out.
| What the request covers | What remains open to article 27 |
|---|---|
| IRPF 2023 | IRPF for other years, VAT, Modelo 720, wealth tax |
| VAT 2024, third quarter | The other VAT quarters and all other taxes |
| Modelo 720 for year X | The IRPF return that should have declared that income |
Regularising the neighbouring years while a review is under way keeps the surcharge, rather than a penalty, for those periods. But it also tells the tax authorities that the same problem exists in other years, and nothing stops them widening the scope of their action. It is a decision taken with the amount in front of you and knowing that the outcome is not guaranteed; what is certain is that waiting for them to widen the scope removes the option.
Three situations that come up again and again
A request arrives about fourth-quarter VAT and income tax has not been regularised. Income tax remains open. Regularising it now keeps the surcharge. Waiting to see what happens with the VAT is a bet that the inspector will not connect the two taxes, which the system does automatically as soon as income figures are matched.
A warning letter arrives about income from abroad. It is not a request, so the window is open. But the data comes from an automatic exchange of information and is already on file. Here the only variable the taxpayer controls is the date: every month that passes raises the surcharge and raises the likelihood that the communication which does close the door will arrive.
The request is addressed to the bank or the payer, not to you. A request for information sent to a third party is not, for the taxpayer, an action carried out with his or her formal knowledge, so it does not close the taxpayer's window. It is a different matter if the taxpayer knows because the bank has told them: finding out is not the same as being notified. The practical consequence is uncomfortable but clear: someone who gets that unofficial warning is still in time, and will not be for long.
The special case of neighbouring periods
There is one case in which regularising after an administrative assessment does not generate even a surcharge: when other periods of the same tax are self-assessed following the facts the tax authorities already corrected, within six months of notification, with full acknowledgment and payment, without appealing or seeking rectification of that assessment, and provided no penalty arose from it. It is the best possible way out when the authorities' view is accepted, and it is explained with its four conditions in the surcharge guide.
When the scope is general
A notice opening an inspection with general scope for a given tax and given periods covers everything relating to them. There is no window left inside that perimeter: any self-assessment filed afterwards will be late and filed after a prior request. What does remain open is everything outside the notified scope, which is why the first thing to read in an opening notice is exactly which taxes and which periods it covers, and whether the scope is general or partial.
The request that does not concern a tax of yours
Some administrative actions arrive at your address and close nothing. A request addressed to a comunidad de bienes (a co-ownership arrangement with its own tax number) of which you are a member, a notification concerning a company of which you are a director, or a step in proceedings conducted with another person all concern someone else's obligations. For the taxpayer's own obligations, the window stays open until there is an action addressed to him or her, properly notified and referring to that tax and that period.
It pays to read the heading of the document carefully: who the taxpayer is, which NIF (tax number) appears, which tax and which period are cited. Those four details are what define the effect, not the general impression that "the tax office is already looking".
Why it is unwise to push the window to the limit
Someone who discovers a year filed wrongly usually reasons like this: "as long as they do not send a request, the surcharge goes up one point a month; I can afford to wait until everything is perfect". It is an incomplete calculation, for three reasons.
- The cost is not linear. Going from eleven to twelve months does not add one point: it jumps from 12 % to 15 % and switches on late-payment interest. The last step is the most expensive of all.
- The information is already moving. Automatic exchanges between administrations, information returns filed by third parties and internal cross-checks mean the data is in the system before the letter arrives. The time left is not what you think.
- More than the surcharge is at stake. If the request arrives, the whole article 27 regime disappears and the penalty regime comes in, with its record. The right comparison is not between 4 % and 6 %, but between 6 % and a penalty that starts at half the tax.
Filing with what you have, properly calculated and reasonably supported, is usually better than filing perfectly six months later. If a specific figure is missing, you can regularise with the best estimate available and correct it later; what cannot be fixed is losing the spontaneity.
What to do on the day something arrives
- Identify what it is. Warning, request for information, opening of a limited review, inspection. The differences are in how to tell what has reached you.
- Note the exact tax and period, as they appear in the document.
- List what falls outside that perimeter and assess whether it should be regularised now.
- Work out the cost of each option before moving a single paper, using the surcharge scale and the amount of the possible penalties.
- Answer what is asked and only what is asked. Supplying more widens the conversation: see what to provide and, above all, what not to.
If you have just received something and are not sure whether it shuts the door or leaves it ajar, send it to us through the late filing form. Classifying it is quick and it shapes everything else; you can also first see how we handle these files. We will tell you what window is left and what risks come with using it, without promising an outcome that depends on decisions that are not ours.