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Spain: An attractive country for investment
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8Legislation on foreign investment and exchange control

8.3 Foreign transactions declarations with the Bank of Spain

For purely statistical and informative purposes the Circular 4/2012 of Bank of Spain, establishes that individuals or entities (public or private) resident in Spain, other than payment service providers registered on the official registers of the Bank of Spain, that carry out transactions with non-residents or hold assets or liabilities abroad, must report them to the Bank of Spain23.

The frequency of the notifications will depend on the volume of transactions carried out by the subjects obliged to submit them in the immediately preceding year, and on the balance of assets and liabilities of these subjects at December 31 of the previous year, as follows:

  • If the amount of the transactions during the immediately preceding year, or the balance of assets and liabilities at December 31 of the preceding year, is €300 million or more, the information shall be provided monthly, within the 20 days following the end of each calendar month.
  • If the amount of the transactions during the immediately preceding year, or the balance of assets and liabilities at December 31 of the preceding year, is €100 million or more but less than €300 million, the information shall be provided quarterly, within the 20 days following the end of each calendar quarter.
  • If the amount of the transactions during the immediately preceding year, or the balance of assets and liabilities at December 31 of the preceding year, is less than €100 million, the information shall be provided annually, within the first 20 days of January of the following year.
  • When the aforementioned amounts do not exceed €1 million, the return will only be submitted to the Bank of Spain at the express request thereof, and in a maximum period of two months following the date of that request.

    However, residents that have not reached the reporting thresholds mentioned above, but that will cross them in the current year, will be required to file the corresponding declarations within the timeframe previously established from the moment at which the limits are exceeded.

Notwithstanding, when neither the amount of the balances nor the transactions exceed €50 million, the declarations can be filed on a summarized basis, only indicating the opening and closing balances of assets and liabilities held abroad, the total sum of receipts and the total sum of payments in the period reported.

23Without prejudice to the fact that the parties subject to the obligation to report to Bank of Spain detailed here are individuals and entities resident in Spain, we considered it of interest to include this section, since what gives rise to these reporting obligations are precisely transactions with nonresidents and/or assets and liabilities held abroad or which the nonresident entity holds in Spain (in other words, both the real estate held abroad by a Spanish company and the real estate held in Spain by a nonresident entity must be declared).