Óscar runs a gym in Valladolid as a self-employed person, in a warehouse he rents for 2,400 € a month plus VAT. Each month he withholds 456 € from the owner and transfers the rest. During 2026 he lost members, electricity prices went up and he had to replace machines. In July he filed the second-quarter Modelo 115 with an acknowledgement of debt (reconocimiento de deuda) and without paying: 1,368 €. In October he did the same with the third quarter's. Two quarters, 2,736 € withheld from the landlord and not paid over. He asked us what would happen to him and, above all, whether his landlord would find out.
Both answers have nuances worth knowing before the calendar decides them for you.
What has been under way since the 21st
Filing without paying avoided an offence. What it did not avoid is each debt moving into the enforcement period (periodo ejecutivo) the day after its deadline: 21 July for the second quarter and 21 October for the third. From then on, the cost depends on when he pays:
| If he pays… | Surcharge | Q2 (1,368 €) | Q3 (1,368 €) | Together |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before the enforcement order (providencia de apremio) is notified | 5 % | 68.40 € | 68.40 € | 136.80 € |
| Within the period the enforcement order opens | 10 % | 136.80 € | 136.80 € | 273.60 € |
| Afterwards, with seizure under way | 20 % + interest | 273.60 € | 273.60 € | 547.20 € + interest |
Each quarter is a separate debt with its own clock. The second-quarter debt may already be at 10 % while the third-quarter one is still at 5 %, and it makes sense to pay first the one about to jump to the next band.
Why he cannot ask for a payment schedule
With an income tax debt, or one for most other taxes, Óscar could apply to pay in instalments without a guarantee, because he is well below 50,000 €. Not with the 115. Withholding is on the list in article 65.2 of the Ley General Tributaria (the General Tax Act), the list of debts that cannot be deferred, and the application is declared inadmissible and treated as never filed. It suspends nothing and does not slow down enforcement. While he waits for an answer, the debt moves on. It is developed in the debts that cannot be deferred.
The realistic way out is a different one: prioritise. Of all the business's debts, withholding is the one with least room, because it can be neither deferred nor negotiated. Óscar decided to ask his machine supplier for two more months to pay, which was negotiable, and to use that money to pay both 115 debts within the 5 % band.
Does the landlord find out?
Not directly, and it does him no harm. The owner of the warehouse will deduct in his own return the withholding Óscar made on his rent, whether or not it was paid over. He received 2,400 € less 456 € each month, plus VAT, and his right to deduct those 456 € does not depend on what Óscar does afterwards. The whole debt is the tenant's.
But there are two ways the problem can end up reaching the landlord. The first is the annual withholding certificate: Óscar has to give it to him with the real figures, and altering it to match what was paid in would be a much more serious problem than the debt. The second is a seizure: if the Agencia Tributaria gets as far as seizing debts owed to Óscar, it can go to anyone who owes him money, and in a lease the tenant has a claim against the landlord: the return of the deposit at the end, when the landlord himself holds it. The landlord receiving a seizure order over that deposit is a rather awkward way of finding out.
What almost nobody tells you: set-off and the certificate
If Óscar has a 2025 income tax refund still to come, the Agencia Tributaria can set it off on its own initiative against the 115 debts in the enforcement period. The refund will not reach his account: a set-off decision will arrive instead. For many self-employed people, it is the first news that enforcement had already begun.
And while the debts remain unpaid, Óscar will not be able to obtain the certificate of being up to date with tax obligations (certificado de estar al corriente). If the gym applies for public aid or has an agreement with the council for sports activities, that certificate is always requested, and that is the moment when a small debt becomes urgent.
If you have quarters of the 115 filed and unpaid and do not know what stage each one is at, tell us in the self-employed form: with your authorisation we can check on the online tax office the status of each debt and the cheapest order in which to settle them.
Faced with a withholding debt, some people think of paying the owner the full rent and no longer filing the 115, so as not to build up more. It is the worst possible option: the obligation to withhold is still yours, Hacienda (the Spanish tax authority) would claim from you what you should have withheld and, on top of that, because you did not file, the new debts would come with a penalty and not a surcharge. If the problem is cash, what gets renegotiated is the rent with the landlord, not the withholding with Hacienda.
The difference from not having filed
Óscar was right to file. If he had left the two quarters undeclared, the situation would be different from the root. There would be no debt under enforcement but an omission that the Agencia Tributaria would detect sooner or later, almost always through the landlord's return, in which he deducts withholding that nobody has paid in. From the requerimiento, the formal request, onwards, each quarter would be assessed with late-payment interest and would give rise to penalty proceedings. And failing to pay over withholding that was actually deducted is one of the things the law treats most harshly: when it represents more than half of the amount not paid, the offence is classed as very serious, with a fine of 100 to 150 %.
On 2,736 €, the minimum penalty in that scenario would be 2,736 €, which with the reductions for agreeing to the assessment and for prompt payment would come down to 1,149.12 €. Compared with the 136.80 € of surcharge Óscar ended up paying, the decision to file even though he could not pay saved him more than a thousand euros. Why the line is drawn by the request is in what counts as a prior request.
Once the enforcement order's period has passed, the enforcement procedure follows the order of seizure set by law: money in accounts, credits, income and, later, other assets, always proportionate to the debt. For a business that collects its fees by direct debit, seizure of the account into which the batches of payments arrive is the most immediate blow, because it leaves that month's payments without funds. Óscar is an individual, so he is liable with all his assets, including those that have nothing to do with the gym.
The stages of a case and what can be done at each are in from the proposal to the assessment, and when a deferral makes sense for debts that do allow it in a realistic calendar for paying in instalments. Óscar paid both in November, before receiving any enforcement order: 136.80 € of surcharge in total.