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VAT invoicing

Invoicing obligation, exceptions, types of invoices and contents

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Duty to preserve the invoices

Business owners and professionals must issue and deliver invoices and keep invoices and supporting documents related to their tax obligations during the 4-year limitation period (article 29.2, letter e) of Law 58/2003, of December 17, General Tax Law and 165.One of Law 37/1992).

Likewise, the following documents must be kept with their original content, in an orderly manner and for the period established by the General Tax Law:

  • Invoices received.
  • Physical copies or electronic data pertaining to issued invoices.
  • Accounting records for transactions subject to the reversal taxpayer system when the supplier is not established in the European Community.
  • The justificatory receipts of the compensatory refund in the Special System for Agriculture, Stock Breeding and Fishing, both the original by the issuer, and the copy by the holder of the exploitation.

Similarly, this duty binds business owners or professionals enrolled in any of the special Value Added Tax systems, as well as those not classed as business owners or professionals but who are required to pay Value Added Tax, although in the latter case it shall only encompass invoices recieved and copies of or electronic data on issued invoices.

The various documents, in paper or electronic format, shall be stored by any means enabling the party bound by the duty to guarantee the authenticity of their origin, the integrity of their content and their legibility, as well as immediate access to them by the Tax Agency except for duly justified reasons. This duty may be discharged through use of electronic means.

In order for storage by electronic means in a third country with which there is no legal instrument agreeing mutual assistance to be considered valid, the Tax Agency must have been informed to this effect in advance.

When the invoices received or issued refer to acquisitions for which VAT quotas have been borne whose deduction is subject to a regularization period, they must be kept during their corresponding regularization period and the four following years.

The employers or professionals who carry out operations involving gold as investment will have to keep the copies of the invoices corresponding to these operations for a period of five years.