Registering this quarter? If you register before 31 December 2026, your first Modelo 303 and Modelo 130 are filed from 1 to 30 January 2027, together with the annual Modelo 390.
Every transaction in its place
Invoicing clients abroad from Spain
You are registered in Spain and your clients are not. Nothing about that is unusual any more, and almost none of it works the way domestic invoicing does.
Where each service is taxed
The first question is never how much VAT to charge: it is where the service is deemed to take place. Get that wrong and everything downstream is wrong too.
| Your client | Your invoice | What else appears |
|---|---|---|
| Business in another EU country, with a valid VAT number | No Spanish VAT. The client accounts for it under the reverse charge | You must be on the ROI register, and form 349 follows |
| Business in another EU country without a valid VAT number | Spanish VAT, at the standard rate | Nothing: it is treated as a domestic sale |
| Business outside the EU | Generally no Spanish VAT | Keep evidence of where the client is established |
| Private individual in another EU country | Depends on the service; digital services follow the customer | The one-stop shop, above the 10,000 € threshold |
A client's VAT number can be valid in their country and still not be registered for intra-EU trade. That is why we check every VAT number on VIES and keep the query with its date, invoice by invoice: it is your evidence that the client was acting as a business if the tax office ever asks.
The ROI: the register that makes all this work
The ROI is the register of intra-EU operators, and being on it is what puts you on VIES. It is applied for through box 582 of form 036, and the tax office can take several weeks and may ask you to prove your activity is real before granting it.
The practical consequence is one of timing: registration is compulsory for trading with businesses in other EU countries and it takes weeks, so it has to be applied for before the first invoice, not after. We apply for it on form 036.
Form 349, and why it has to match
Form 349 is the recapitulative statement of intra-EU transactions: who you traded with, their VAT number and how much. Your client files the mirror image of it in their own country, and the two are compared.
That is why discrepancies surface so reliably. A missing invoice, a wrong VAT number or a figure declared in the wrong quarter produces a query months later, addressed to you, about a number that a foreign tax authority reported.
What is billed to you from abroad
The same logic runs in reverse, and this is the part most people miss. Invoices from Google, Amazon, Meta, a hosting provider or a foreign contractor arrive without VAT. You account for the Spanish VAT yourself and deduct it in the same return, so the cash effect is usually nil — but only if you are on the ROI, and only if it is declared.
Leave it out and you have under-declared output tax. The amount owed is often zero, and the penalty is not.
Income tax, and being taxed twice
If you are resident in Spain, you are taxed here on your worldwide income: money invoiced to a client in New York is part of the same Spanish tax return as money invoiced in Málaga. What changes is whether the other country also taxed it.
Where a client has withheld tax abroad, there are two routes, and they are not equivalent. If a double tax treaty applies, the right answer is usually to stop the withholding at source by producing a Spanish certificate of tax residence. Where tax has already been withheld, it is a credit against your Spanish liability — but only up to the limit the treaty allows, so anything withheld above the treaty rate has to be reclaimed from the other country, not from Spain.
They are different documents and the wrong one is simply refused by the foreign payer. We identify which one your case needs before applying.
Getting paid: currencies, platforms and what your bank leaves out
An invoice in dollars is recorded at the exchange rate on the date it accrues, not the date the money lands. The difference between the two is an exchange gain or loss in its own right, and it has to be recorded.
Payment platforms add their own layer: what reaches your account is net of a commission that is itself a deductible expense, but only if you have the platform's invoice, not just a line on a statement. Getting this right is tedious rather than difficult, and it is exactly the sort of thing that should not be your problem every quarter.
Your case, in two minutes
Your invoicing abroad: your map of obligations
The form for this service asks only what matters here. At the end you have your map of obligations, the deadlines running against you and a fixed price.
The paperwork that proves all of this
Everything above rests on evidence, and the evidence has to exist at the time, not be assembled later. For each cross-border invoice we keep the client's VAT number as validated on the date of issue, the contract or engagement that shows what was supplied, and proof of where the client is established.
For services to consumers, what matters is evidence of where the customer is: two pieces of non-contradictory evidence is the usual standard, and payment data plus an IP address is the usual pair. It sounds excessive until a query arrives about a quarter from three years ago.
Common situations we see
| Situation | What it actually needs |
|---|---|
| A developer in Valencia invoicing a US company monthly | No Spanish VAT, evidence of establishment, and a close look at whether the relationship is really self-employment |
| A consultant invoicing companies in France and Germany | ROI, VAT numbers checked each month, 303 and 349 that agree |
| Someone selling courses or templates to consumers across the EU | The 10,000 € threshold, then the one-stop shop, with rates per country |
| A designer paid through a platform in dollars | Exchange rate on the accrual date, the platform's own invoice for its commission, and exchange differences recorded |
The two risks that are not on any form
Permanent establishment. If a foreign client's arrangement starts to look like employment with a Spanish base, the question stops being about VAT and becomes one about what the relationship really is. It is worth spotting early, because it is very hard to unwind later.
Tax residence. Working remotely from several countries in one year is how people end up being claimed as resident by two of them at once. The tie-breaker rules in a treaty decide it, and they turn on facts you can prove — which means keeping the evidence as you go, not reconstructing it afterwards.
What it costs to get it wrong
None of the mistakes on this page are dramatic on their own. What makes them expensive is that they repeat: the same wrong treatment applied to every invoice for two years, discovered by a cross-check against a return filed in another country. By then it is four quarters of VAT, the annual summaries that depended on them, and a surcharge or a penalty depending on who noticed first.
Which is the argument for having it looked at once, properly, at the start.
Our part in your invoicing abroad
We work out where each service is taxed, register you on the ROI, check your clients' VAT numbers invoice by invoice, prepare the 303 and the 349 so they agree with each other, record your currency invoices at the right rate, and tell you before anything is filed.
From 69 € a month, taxes included. We write to you in English, Spanish or French, and the cross-border questions are answered by a lawyer, because that is what they are.