Skip to main content
VAT practical manual 2021.

General rule

The provision of services will be taxed by Spanish VAT according to the following criteria:

  1. When the recipient is a businessperson or professional and the headquarters of his or her economic activity is located in the territory of application of the Tax, or has a permanent establishment or the place of his or her domicile or habitual residence therein, provided that the services are addressed to said headquarters, permanent establishment, domicile or habitual residence, regardless of where the service provider is established and the place from which they are provided.

  2. When the recipient is not a businessman or professional, provided that the services are provided by a businessman or professional and the headquarters of his economic activity or permanent establishment from which he provides them or the place of his domicile or habitual residence is located in the territory of application of the Tax.

By way of exception, the services listed below are not subject to Spanish VAT when the recipient of the services is an individual and is established or has his domicile or habitual residence outside the Community, unless he is established or has his domicile or habitual residence in the Canary Islands, Ceuta or Melilla:

  1. The assignments and concessions of copyrights, patents, licenses, trademarks or trade names and other intellectual or industrial property rights, as well as any other similar rights.

  2. The transfer or granting of goodwill, exclusive purchase or sale rights or the right to exercise a professional activity.

  3. The advertising ones.

  4. Those of advice, auditing, engineering, study offices, law, consultants, accounting or tax experts and others similar, with the exception of those included in number 1 of section One of article 70 of this Law.

  5. Data processing and the provision of information, including commercial procedures and experiences.

  6. Those of translation, correction or composition of texts, as well as those provided by interpreters.

  7. Insurance, reinsurance and capitalization services, as well as financial services, mentioned respectively by article 20, section One, numbers 16 and 18 of this Law, including those that are not exempt, with the exception of the rental of safe deposit boxes.

  8. Those for transfer of personnel.

  9. Dubbing of films.

  10. Leases of tangible personal property, except for those involving any means of transport and containers.

  11. The provision of access to natural gas networks, located in the territory of the Community or to any network connected to said networks, to the electricity and heating or cooling network, and the transportation or distribution through said networks, as well as the provision of other services directly related to any of the services included in this letter.

  12. The obligations not to provide, in whole or in part, any of the services stated in this number.

Headquarters of economic activity:

It will be located in the territory where the businessman or professional centralizes the management and habitual exercise of his activity.

For the purposes of determining the place where services are provided, the headquarters of its economic activity will be the place where the company's central administration functions are carried out. To determine this, the place where the fundamental decisions related to the general management of the company are made, the registered office and the place where the management meets will be taken into account. When these criteria do not allow determining with certainty the location of the headquarters of the economic activity, the criterion that will prevail is the location where the fundamental decisions related to the general management of the company are made.

A simple postal address cannot be considered the headquarters of economic activity.

Permanent establishment:

A permanent establishment is considered to be any fixed place of business where entrepreneurs or professionals carry out economic activities. In particular, the following shall be considered as such: management headquarters, branches, offices, mines, quarries, certain construction, installation or assembly works, agricultural, forestry or livestock farms, real estate operated on lease or under another title, etc.

For the purposes of determining the place where services are provided, a permanent establishment shall be understood to be any establishment, other than the headquarters of the economic activity, that is characterized by a sufficient degree of permanence and an adequate structure in terms of human and technical resources that allow it to receive and use the services provided to it for the specific needs of said establishment or that allow it to provide the services it supplies.

The fact of having a VAT NIF will not be sufficient as such to consider that a taxable person has a permanent establishment in the State that has attributed said NIF .