Óscar Villalba is a self-employed physiotherapist in Zaragoza. When he registered, he chose to receive notifications from the Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax agency, electronically, and since then he has not looked at the online portal again. On Monday 7 September 2026 the Agency makes available to him a formal request within a limited verification procedure on his 2025 VAT: it asks for the expense invoices for one quarter and gives him "a period of ten days". The email alert ends up in his spam folder. Óscar discovers it on 24 September and believes he has already missed the deadline. Probably not, but he has far fewer days than he imagines.
The clock that runs before you open the notification
An electronic notification is not treated as made when the Agency deposits it, but when you access its content. Article 43.2 of Law 39/2015, the general law on administrative procedure, puts it this way: it is made "at the moment access to its content takes place". But it adds the rule that matters: if electronic notification is compulsory for you or you have chosen it, the notification is treated as refused when "ten calendar days from its being made available" pass without your accessing it.
Refused does not mean it does not exist. A refused notification has the same effects as a notification received: the step is treated as done and the deadline starts to run. In other words, those ten calendar days are not a period for replying but a margin for opening the envelope. Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays count.
The second clock: the deadline in the request itself
Once notified, the period set by the document begins. Article 87.4 of the Regulations on tax management and inspection (Royal Decree 1065/2007) states that the communication starting the procedure will grant a period of not less than ten days, counted from the day after notification. And when what you receive is a proposed assessment, article 99.8 of the Ley General Tributaria, Spain's General Tax Law, provides that the period for submitting arguments may be no shorter than ten days and no longer than fifteen.
Unless the rule says otherwise, those days are working days. Article 30.2 of Law 39/2015 excludes from the count "Saturdays, Sundays and days declared public holidays". In addition:
- The count starts on the day after notification (article 30.3).
- If the last day is a non-working day, the period is extended to the next working day (article 30.5).
- A day that is a holiday in your municipality or region but not where the body handling the case is based, or the other way round, is treated as a non-working day (article 30.6).
- In administrative proceedings August is not taken off: it is a working month like any other, unlike what happens before the courts.
Óscar's dates in two scenarios
The same notification can give him two different calendars, depending on what he had done.
| Step | If he had logged in on Saturday 12 | If he never logs in |
|---|---|---|
| Made available | Monday 7 September | Monday 7 September |
| Notification made | Saturday 12 (access) | Around Thursday 17 (refusal after ten calendar days) |
| First day of the period | Monday 14 | Friday 18 |
| Days that do not count | Saturdays and Sundays | Saturdays and Sundays |
| Tenth working day | Friday 25 September | Thursday 1 October |
Step by step, in the second scenario, which is his:
- From 8 to 17 September the ten calendar days pass without access.
- The notification is treated as made by refusal. The exact date is the one shown on the receipt the portal generates, and that is the one to take as the reference.
- The count starts the next day: Friday 18 is day 1.
- The 19th and 20th are skipped (weekend): Monday 21 is day 2, and so on.
- Thursday 1 October is the tenth working day, provided there is no local holiday in between.
When Óscar discovers the notification on 24 September, he has six working days left, not ten. And late access resets nothing: the period is counted from the refusal, not from the day he finally opens it.
The message that reaches your inbox warning you of a notification is only an alert. If it does not arrive, or gets lost in the spam folder, that does not prevent the notification from being treated as made after ten calendar days. The courts have qualified this effect in specific cases, but it is not wise to count on that.
When the period is expressed in months
Appeals are counted differently. The appeal for reconsideration and the economic-administrative claim both have a period of one month (articles 223.1 and 235.1 of the General Tax Law), and months are counted from date to date: the period ends on the same day of the following month as the day of notification (article 30.4 of Law 39/2015). If Óscar were notified of an assessment on 9 October, he could appeal until 9 November; if that day were a non-working day, until the next working day. Here Saturdays and Sundays are not taken off, because the period is not measured in days.
The guide on counting deadlines and electronic notification develops these rules with more examples, including cases of notification on paper.
How to gain margin without missing the deadline
There are three legitimate ways to have more time:
- Ask for an extension. Article 91 of the Regulations allows the period to be extended by up to half its length, once only, if the request is made before the three days preceding its expiry. With ten working days, the extension would be five more. The conditions are explained in can I ask for more time.
- Reply in parts. If some of the documents are available, they can be provided within the period with an explanation of what is missing and why. It is not a formal extension, but it leaves a record that the request has not been ignored.
- Open notifications as soon as they arrive. It seems obvious, but it is what decides whether you have ten days or six. If you are travelling or cannot check the portal for a while, the Agency lets you set, each year, a number of days on which it will not make notifications available to you; this has to be requested in advance through the portal itself.
If Óscar needs help to finish his reply in the days he has left, he can send the complete request and the invoices he has to hand through the letter-from-Hacienda form.
What happens if the deadline has already passed
Missing the deadline does not close the procedure. The authorities can carry on and draw up the proposal with the information they have, but what you provide before they do so can still influence it. There is a limit worth knowing: once the hearing or arguments stage has taken place, article 96.4 of the Regulations prevents further documents from being added, unless it is shown that it was impossible to provide them earlier and provided they are submitted before the decision.
Replying late is therefore almost always better than not replying, but there is no guarantee that what is provided out of time will be taken into account. The consequences of not replying are set out in what happens if I do not reply.
Three common counting mistakes
- Counting from the date of the letter. The issue date is no use; what counts is the date of notification or of refusal.
- Counting from when you opened it, when you opened it late. If you log in on day twelve, the notification had already been made on day ten.
- Forgetting the local holiday, or inventing one. A holiday in your municipality adds a day; one in another city does not, unless it is where the body handling the case is based.
Replying to requests and proposals from the Agencia Tributaria, with the deadlines controlled from the first notification, is described on the Salama Tax page on letters from Hacienda.