SII- Electronic VAT ledgers

Last Tuesday 6th December 2016 was published in the Spanish Official Gazette the Regulation 596/2016, that amended, amongst others, the VAT Regulation approved by Royal Decret 1624/1992, of 29th December, as regards to specific issues related to the VAT ledgers.

In this sense as of 1st July 2017 onwards, companies filing Spanish VAT returns on a monthly basis (i.e. due to their VAT turnover or because they have applied for the monthly refund procedure) will be subject to the submission of VAT ledgers using electronic means.

It should be stress that even though this will be compulsory as of 1st July 2017, those taxpayers will also be obliged to submit the invoicing registers corresponding to the period January- June 2017, during the second half of the year, meaning that at the end of the day, at the end of the year 2017, those taxpayers will have reported all the invoices issued or received within the calendar year 2017, via electronic means.

The main obstacle is the need to report the invoicing registers within a maximum period of four days as from the issue date or the registration date of the received invoice.

Moreover, in the case of intra- EU movements of goods, the four days period will be fixed based on the date when the transport started or when the goods were effectively received. Since for the time being this information is usually not available in the accountancy systems, to the extent it is a logistic information, it will be necessary to include new data in the accountancy information.

This new reporting procedure will imply a thorough review of all the transactions carried out by the taxpayers in order to check that they are correctly reported in their VAT ledgers and avoid potential amendments in the VAT ledgers that would likely trigger tax audit procedures or information requests from the Spanish Tax Authorities, that were not usual for the time being as the Spanish Tax Authorities did not have access to the VAT ledgers online.

The non compliance with said obligation might lead to the opening of a tax infringement procedure that where fines could be imposed, although such fines are limited to a maximum of 24.000 euros/ year.

At bln palao abogados we stay at your disposal to clarify any doubt that may arise concerning this issue. Should this be the case, please do not hesitate to contact us by phone (+34 91 8318008) or via e-mail info@blnpalao.com 

Useful links 

Please find below some useful links where you will find interesting information concerning this topic. All the documents are in Spanish:

1.- Summary published by the AEAT detailing the main modifications introduced by RD 596/2016, 2nd December.

​2.- Document produced by the AEAT detailing the functioning of the SII and the requirements needed.

​3.- Document produced by the AEAT dated 20th NOvember 2015 with the configuration and the format of the messages to be sent to the AEAT.
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4.- Royal Decree 596/2016, of 2nd December