Sergio Blasco is the sole director of a small building-refurbishment company in Castellón. Companies are required to receive notifications from the Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax agency, electronically, and his company received its alerts at an email address managed by a former employee. On 11 May 2026 the Agency made available to the company a VAT assessment for 12,400 €. Nobody opened it. Sergio finds out in September, when the bank tells him the company's account has been seized. His question is whether he can argue that he never knew. He can argue it, but it will probably not help him; what is useful is to know what stage he is at and what margin he has left.
Ten calendar days and the notification counts as made
Article 43.2 of Law 39/2015, the general law on administrative procedure, governs electronic notification: it is made when you access its content and, if electronic notification is compulsory for you or you have chosen it, it is treated as refused when "ten calendar days from its being made available" pass without access. Refusal has the same effects as receipt: the act is notified and the deadlines start to run.
In addition, for the purposes of the maximum length of procedures, article 104.2 of the Ley General Tributaria, Spain's General Tax Law, treats the obligation to notify as met by the mere fact of making the notification available on the online portal or at the enabled electronic address. For the authorities, as soon as the notification is available, they have notified in time.
The obligation applies to companies and to other persons specified by the rules, and to individuals who choose it or are included in the system. If you are an individual, have never chosen the electronic route and are not obliged to use it, the notification should have been attempted on paper; in that case the analysis is different, and we deal with it further down.
The dates for Sergio's company
| Milestone | Date | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Made available | Monday 11 May | The ten calendar days begin |
| Refusal for lack of access | Around Thursday 21 May | The assessment is notified |
| End of the period to appeal | Monday 22 June (the 21st is a Sunday) | The assessment becomes final |
| End of the voluntary payment period | Monday 6 July (the 5th is a Sunday) | The enforcement period begins |
| Enforcement order | Later, also electronic | Enforcement surcharge and a period to pay |
| Seizure | September | Sergio finds out |
The month to appeal is counted from date to date (article 30.4 of Law 39/2015), and the voluntary payment period comes from article 62.2 of the General Tax Law: for a notification between the 16th and the last day of the month, until the 5th of the second month after. When the last day falls on a non-working day, it moves to the next working day.
What each stage you let pass costs
With a debt of 12,400 €, the surcharges of the enforcement period under article 28 would be:
- Enforcement surcharge, 5 %: 620 €, if the whole debt is paid before the enforcement order is notified. No late-payment interest.
- Reduced collection surcharge, 10 %: 1,240 €, if the debt and the surcharge are paid within the period the enforcement order opens (article 62.5). No interest either.
- Ordinary collection surcharge, 20 %: 2,480 €, in all other cases, plus late-payment interest from the start of the enforcement period.
Sergio found out through the seizure, so he is most likely already on the third step. If the enforcement order was also notified by refusal and the period it opened has ended, the 20 % is hard to avoid.
The courts have accepted in some cases that an electronic notification had no effect, for example when the authorities knew the person concerned could not access it, or when the system's requirements were not met. These are exceptions that depend on specific facts, and they should not be relied on to build the defence.
What to check first
Before giving anything up for lost, you need to rebuild what was notified, when and how:
- The receipt for each notification. The portal generates an acknowledgement with the date it was made available and the date of access or refusal. It is the proof of what happened.
- Whether the obligation or the choice existed. An individual who never chose the electronic route and is not obliged to use it can dispute a notification made only by that route.
- Whether every stage was notified. The proposal, the assessment and the enforcement order are separate acts. One of them may not have been properly notified even if the others were.
- Whether the earlier procedure had defects. For example, if the assessment was issued after the procedure had lapsed, as explained in what a limited verification procedure is.
If you are in a situation like this, you can send the receipts from the portal and the latest notification through the letter-from-Hacienda form (Hacienda being the everyday name for the Spanish tax office). With those documents the full calendar can be rebuilt.
What margin is left, depending on the stage
If you are still within the month from notification, even though you found it late, you can appeal the assessment in the normal way. The period runs from the refusal, not from the day you opened it.
If the assessment is final but you have not received the enforcement order, paying now limits the cost to 5 % and avoids interest.
If there is already an enforcement order, article 167.3 of the General Tax Law lists the only grounds for opposing it: extinction or limitation, deferral or other grounds for suspension, failure to notify the assessment, annulment of the assessment, and errors that prevent the debtor or the debt from being identified. If the assessment was not validly notified, this is the channel; if it was notified by refusal, the argument does not succeed.
If everything is final, the extraordinary review procedures remain: nullity as of right under article 217, with very narrowly defined cases, or revocation under article 219, which is not a right of the taxpayer but a power of the authorities. Their reach is limited and neither has a guaranteed outcome.
At any stage, if the problem is cash, you can also ask for deferral during the enforcement period. The general answer is in can I pay what I owe in instalments.
So that it does not happen again
Most of these cases do not stem from an irregular notification but from an alert that goes to an address nobody looks at. Three simple measures:
- Check which email address is registered for alerts on the Agency's portal and in the single enabled electronic address (DEHú), and put it in the name of someone who reads it.
- Log in to the portal more often than every ten days, even if there is no alert. The alert is a courtesy; the notification exists without it.
- If you are going to be without access for a while, use the days on which the Agency allows you, on prior request, not to have notifications made available.
When the problem is that the registered tax address is out of date, the guide to fixing your tax address explains how to correct it. And counting deadlines after an electronic notification, in detail, is covered in how many days you really have to reply.
If the notification was on paper
For anyone not in the electronic system, the regime is different: the authorities must attempt delivery at the address, at least twice unless the addressee is recorded as unknown there, and if that fails they publish a notice in the Official State Gazette (BOE). Article 112.2 of the General Tax Law gives fifteen calendar days from that publication to come forward; once they pass without your doing so, the notification is treated as made. A notice in the BOE that nobody reads has, in practice, the same effect as an unopened electronic notification.
Reviewing notifications, missed deadlines and enforcement procedures is described on the Salama Tax page on letters from Hacienda.