Your Spanish company already exists
The company is set up. Now it has to work.
This is the cheapest moment in your company’s life to get these right, and the most expensive one to get wrong.
Somebody formed your Spanish company and handed you a deed, a tax number and a folder. What nobody has told you is that a set of obligations started running the day that company came into existence, that they run in Spanish, and that they don’t wait for your first invoice.
The risk at this stage is almost always not knowing there was a form to fill, a document to send, a deadline… and finding out when a surcharge arrives.
Not formed yet? Start with what setting up a Spanish company involves, and how long it takes.
Obligations begin at incorporation, not at first revenue.
A Spanish company with no activity is still a Spanish company. It has a filing profile, a calendar and an address the authorities will write to. Several things are already true on the day you read this. The whole first year is set out in what already started when you registered, the handover itself in a 90-day handover checklist, and the order to activate it in taking a new company from incorporated to operational.
-
Returns are due whether or not you’ve traded.
A dormant quarter still has a VAT return. A first year with no revenue still has a corporate income tax return.
-
Notices are electronic, in Spanish, and time-limited.
They don’t arrive as letters. They arrive in a system that somebody has to be watching.
-
Your digital certificate expires in two years and cannot be renewed.
It has to be reissued. Without it, nothing can be filed or signed. Most newly formed companies don’t know they have one, or don’t know who holds it.
-
Late filing carries a surcharge that grows with the delay,
plus penalties where a return was required and missed. Nothing about that process involves anyone warning you first.
Your formation agent’s job ended at the deed. Here’s what starts after it.
Formation is a defined piece of work with a defined end, and it ends at the Registry. These are the items that sit on the other side of that line, and they are the ones we check first.
- 01 Your tax profile. What activities your company declared, and whether they match what it actually does. This decides which returns you owe, and getting it wrong is quiet until it isn’t.
- 02 The digital certificate. Whether one exists, who holds it, and when it expires.
- 03 Power of attorney for official notices. Without it, notices go to a mailbox nobody in Spain is watching.
- 04 EU VAT registration. Being listed in VIES requires a separate application. It can trigger a visit from an inspector to confirm the company genuinely operates from its registered address. That visit is normal, and being unprepared for it is how the application fails.
- 05 Your employer account with Social Security. Needed before your first employee, not on their first day.
- 06 The bank account, actually working. Opened is not the same as operational. Signatories, access and payment limits routinely aren’t.
- 07 Accounting from day one. Spanish books run from the date of incorporation, including the share capital and the formation costs themselves. Starting them three months late means reconstructing three months.
- 08 The registered address. Whether correspondence reaching it reaches anyone.
- 09 Your first filing date. Most companies don’t know what it is.
The 72-hour compliance map
Your first 90 days, written down, within 72 hours.
A call and a short document, in English. What your company is obliged to do, when each item falls due, what’s already missing, and what to deal with first. It is specific to your company, not a generic checklist, and it is written so you can forward it to your head office without explaining it.
- Your filing calendar for the next twelve months, with dates.
- Anything already overdue, and what to do about it.
- Which of the nine items above are done, missing, or wrong.
- What has to happen before your first employee, if one is coming.
- A single recommended next step.
From the map to running properly.
Certificate obtained or reissued. Power of attorney registered so notices come to us. Tax profile corrected if it’s wrong. VIES application made and the visit prepared for. Social Security employer account opened. Books opened from the date of incorporation, including share capital and formation costs.
Every filing on your calendar, prepared and submitted. Your official mailbox checked every working day. Your digital certificate held and reissued before it lapses. Payroll from your first employee, under the collective agreement that actually applies to you. A named advisor who knows your company and speaks English. And a monthly brief in English so your parent can see what’s happening without asking.
Keeping the books at HQ? Our guide to choosing who runs accounting, tax and payroll sets out what HQ keeps and what the Spanish team takes on.
What’s inside the monthly service →The first payroll and the first return are the ones that matter.
Errors made at the start don’t stay at the start. A collective agreement wrongly chosen for your first employee applies to everyone hired after them, and the underpayment accrues quietly until somebody checks. A tax profile declared incorrectly generates the wrong returns for years. An intercompany arrangement set up casually in month two becomes the arrangement you have to defend in year four.
If anything is filed late through our fault, we pay the surcharge and the penalty.
You are inheriting a calendar you didn’t set and didn’t choose. The least we can do is carry the cost of missing a date on it.
We guarantee only what we control. Never the bank, the tax authority or the Registry.
If you’ve moved here yourself, that’s a separate question worth asking early.
Founders and directors who relocate to Spain have a decision with a deadline attached. The régimen de impatriados — the Beckham regime — taxes Spanish employment income at a flat 24% up to €600,000 instead of the progressive scale, for the year of arrival and the five that follow. The application has to be filed within six months of starting work, and the window is missed more often than any other in Spanish tax.
Alongside it: how you pay yourself from the company, and keeping your personal and company positions cleanly separated from the beginning rather than untangling them later.
What it costs.
-
The 72-hour compliance map: free
Your calendar, anything already overdue, and one recommended next step. Yours to keep whether or not you move to us.
-
Then a fixed monthly fee
Built from your obligations and agreed in writing before anything starts. Tax, employment, payroll, your named advisor, administrative custody and the portal.
-
Anything already overdue
Is quoted as a fixed-price catch-up before any work starts, so you know the cost of the backlog before you commit to the monthly fee.
A company that doesn’t really do anything doesn’t need us.
Some Spanish companies are formed to hold paperwork rather than to trade — to support a residence application, to park a structure, to satisfy a requirement somewhere else. If that’s what yours is, a monthly retainer is the wrong product and we’ll say so in the first call. We can handle the filings as individual pieces of work, and that’s the honest answer.
We’ll also tell whoever referred you, plainly, that we’ve done that. They’d rather know.
Questions from companies that already exist.
- Our company has no activity yet. Do we still have to file?
-
Yes. A dormant company still has a filing calendar — VAT returns for the quarters, a corporate income tax return for the year, and the obligation to deposit annual accounts. Filing nil returns on time costs nothing. Not filing them does.
- Who holds our digital certificate?
-
Whoever obtained it, which is often the formation agent or the notary, and sometimes nobody. It’s worth establishing now: it expires two years after issue, it cannot be renewed but must be reissued, and without it your company cannot file, sign or access anything.
- We were formed three months ago and haven’t done anything. Are we in trouble?
-
Usually not seriously, and it’s a common position. Late filings carry a surcharge that increases with the delay, so the cost of catching up rises month by month — which is an argument for doing it now rather than a reason to panic.
- Do you do company formation as well?
-
Yes, but not for companies referred to us by the firm that formed them. If your formation agent pointed you here, we won’t be quoting you for anything they do.
- Can we keep our accounting in-house or in the group system?
-
Yes. Bookkeeping is a module here, not the foundation. If your parent handles it or your group runs SAP, Dynamics or Sage, you can buy tax and employment on their own, and we connect read-only to your numbers so we can still see what’s moving.
- How quickly can you take over?
-
The compliance map comes back within 72 hours. Taking over the running of the company takes two to four weeks, mostly waiting on the certificate and the power of attorney, and we can file on your behalf during it.
Find out what’s already running.
Tell us when the company was incorporated, what it’s meant to do, and whether anyone has been hired yet. Within 72 hours you’ll have your calendar, anything already overdue, and one recommended next step. It’s free, and yours to keep either way.
Replies within 24 hours. Referred by the firm that set you up? Say so.