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Practical manual VAT 2024.

Formal obligations

  1. In general, those who exclusively carry out this activity do not have, for the purposes of VAT , the obligation to issue a billing document for sales, unless they pay taxes under the direct estimation regime in IRPF , although, when the recipient is a businessman or professional or when required to exercise a right of a tax nature, an invoice must be issued. Likewise, this obligation will exist in the other cases regulated in article 2.2 of the Regulation governing billing obligations, approved by Royal Decree 1619/2012, of November 30.

  2. Taxpayers are required to prove to their suppliers or to Customs whether or not they are subject to the special regime.

    Please note that a new help service " Retailer consultation on equivalence surcharge " has been added to the Tax Agency's electronic headquarters, where you can check whether your client (retailer) is subject or not to the special regime of the equivalence surcharge. The data provided by this help service corresponds to the census situation on the date of consultation.

  3. Taxable persons are not required to keep accounting records in relation to VAT.

    Exceptions:

    If you carry out other activities under the special regime for agriculture, livestock and fishing or the simplified regime, you must keep a Record Book of invoices received, recording separately the invoices corresponding to the purchases of each sector of the activity, including those for the surcharge.

    If you carry out other activities under the general regime or any other regime other than those mentioned above, you must comply with the general or specific obligations with respect to them. In the Record Book of Incoming Invoices, invoices relating to purchases corresponding to activities to which the special regime of the equivalence surcharge is applicable must be recorded separately.

  4. When importing goods, the corresponding customs declarations must be submitted to Customs. When making intra-community acquisitions or when there are cases of reversal of the taxable person, they must settle the tax and, where applicable, the surcharge by submitting the form 309.

  5. When delivering goods to travelers entitled to a tax refund, they will file a declaration in form 308 requesting the return of the refunds to the travelers, accredited with the transfers to the interested parties or to the collaborating entities.

  6. When making deliveries of real estate subject to and not exempt from tax (except in the case of deliveries made in execution of the guarantee constituted on the real estate), they must pay the tax accrued in these operations, using the model 309.

  7. When they simultaneously carry out economic activities in other sectors of business or professional activity, they must have documented in different invoices the acquisitions of goods intended for each of the different activities carried out by them.