Spanish form 840
Which form applies, how many returns it is and which office they go to.
- Your form is the 840, approved by paragraph One of Order HAC/2572/2003. Its reference number begins with code 890.
- If a relief granted on application is due to you, article 9.1 requires it to be requested «when filing the registration return». The body that grants or refuses it is your town hall.
- The deadline for each return is in articles 5, 6 and 7 of the regulation, and our IAE calculator resolves it, including the year you start paying.
Adjustments: zero quota, heading 508 and group
| Quota class | Census administration | Form |
|---|---|---|
| Municipal | The State runs it | Form 840 |
| Municipal | Delegated | The delegated body’s own |
| Provincial | The State runs it | Form 840 |
| Provincial | Delegated | Form 840 |
| National | The State runs it | Form 840 |
| National | Delegated | Form 840 |
Form 840 is not everybody’s form, and which one is depends on your municipality
Almost every page about this form assumes that an IAE payer files a form 840 with the Spanish tax office. Article 8 of Royal Decree 243/1995 has two paragraphs and the second says the opposite for a large minority: «where census administration is carried out by delegation, registration, variation or deregistration returns shall be filed at the offices of the relevant body, in the manner and on the forms it determines». Neither the form nor the counter. Article 91.1 of the consolidated Act explains where that delegation comes from: forming the register, classifying activities and «census administration of the tax in general» belong to the State, but «in the case of municipal quotas» those functions «may be delegated to town halls, provincial councils, island councils and other bodies recognised by law and by the autonomous communities that request it». The limit is the useful part: delegation exists only for the municipal quota. If you are taxed by provincial or national quota, census administration is the State’s whatever happens and the form is the 840 with no further questions.
Who files nothing at all, and the exception identified by heading number
The first paragraph of article 5.1 requires registration in the tax register from taxpayers «who are not exempt from the tax», and the second adds those who had been applying an exemption «when they cease to meet the conditions required for it». Since every individual is exempt under article 82.1.c), as are companies with net turnover below one million euros, the vast majority of people who start a business never file this form. And the threshold is exclusive: the text says «below 1,000,000 euros», so at exactly one million the exemption is gone. The third paragraph of the same provision adds a further relief almost nobody mentions: anyone carrying on activities «whose resulting quota is zero, whether because that follows from the tariffs or because the State administration has so declared» does not file a registration return either, «with the exception of economic interest groupings and temporary business consortia classified under heading 508 of section 1 of the tariffs». A relief with an exception identified by heading number.
One return per activity, plus one for every premises you do not work in
Article 5.2 requires returns to be made «separately for each activity», referring to paragraph 3 of rule 10 of the Instruction. And it adds a rule that multiplies the paperwork of anyone with a warehouse: where the taxpayer is taxed by municipal quota and has premises in which the activity is not directly carried on, those in letter h) of section F of rule 14, «a return shall be filed for each of those premises, although for the purposes of the subsequent assessment only the surface area element shall be taken into account». Two activities and three warehouses are five returns. With a provincial or national quota the rule inverts: the following paragraph requires the return to list «all premises, whatever their location and use, adding together the surface area of all of them». The same three warehouses then add no returns at all. And the annex that carries them has its own name: paragraph One of the Order approves, «as an annex to form 840», the «list of premises».
Four possible offices, and a change of quota class is filed at two
Article 8.1 allocates filing by quota class. With a municipal quota, to the tax office «whose territorial area corresponds to the place where the activity is carried on», and here is the detail: the return for indirect premises is filed «at the office whose territorial area corresponds to the place where the premises are located», which is usually not the same one. With a provincial quota, to the provincial office of the territory where the activities are carried on. With a national quota, to the office of the taxpayer’s tax domicile. And letter d) adds the case nobody expects: variations caused by a change of quota class «must be filed at the offices where the returns being amended were filed and also, where applicable, at the offices corresponding» to the new class. Two filings for one change. Article 6.1 also recalls that such a change is a variation whose effects begin in the following tax period, unless deregistration and registration returns are filed instead.
You file it with one administration and a different one decides
Article 9.1 requires reliefs and tax benefits granted on application to be requested «when filing the registration return in the tax register». It is not a separate step to be taken later at leisure: it goes in the registration return or it is lost for that period. And the body that decides is not the body that receives. Article 9.2 says that with a municipal quota and State census administration «the body receiving a registration return in which recognition of a tax benefit is requested shall forward it to the competent town hall, so that the latter adopts the relevant decision and notifies the interested party». Article 91.2 of the consolidated Act confirms it: assessment, collection and «the functions of granting and refusing exemptions and reliefs» belong to the town hall. So you file with the tax office, your town hall answers you and your town hall bills you. And if you want to challenge the census act, article 91.4 sends you to the State Economic-Administrative Tribunals, even when the act was issued by a town hall under delegation.
A year after the deadline the electronic channel ends, and paper becomes compulsory
Paragraph Four.Three of Order HAC/2572/2003 is blunt: «electronic filing of form 840 returns may not be carried out once more than one year has elapsed since the end of the deadlines set out in paragraph six of this Order. Once those periods have passed, the return must be filed using the corresponding paper form». That is the opposite of what has happened with every other form in the system, where paper was progressively suppressed. And it survives for a reason you can check in one reading: Order HAP/2194/2013, the one that suppressed paper for information returns, enumerates in its article 1 the forms it applies to (one hundred and twenty-nine of them: sixty self-assessments, fifty-eight information returns and eleven census filings) and neither the 840 nor the 848 appears in any of its three lists, not even the census one, which is where they would belong, on an article with forty-six versions whose latest has been in force since 1 January 2026. It cannot have repealed a channel of a form that falls outside its scope. It is also why the 2003 text still speaks of X.509 certificates from the Royal Mint and of «generating a file»: nothing has reached in to modernise it.
Form 848 is the residual case, and its date is not in the regulation
The third paragraph of article 90.2 of the consolidated Act requires non-exempt taxpayers to report their net turnover to the tax office, and also its variations when these change the exemption or «the band to be considered for the purposes of applying the weighting coefficient provided for in article 86». The form is the 848, and paragraph One of Order HAC/85/2003 empties that duty almost entirely: exempt taxpayers are relieved of it and so are non-exempt ones who have already stated that figure in the last corporation tax return filed before 1 January of the year in which the figure is to take effect, or in the information return provided for civil-law partnerships and entities without legal personality. In a group of companies under article 42 of the Commercial Code the relief is conditional on the parent having stated the group’s combined figure, so having your own properly declared is not enough. What is left is the residual case: a taxpayer who is not exempt and whose figure appears in no return. And the date is the oddest thing about the pair. Paragraph Six of the form 840 Order sets none: it refers back «to the deadlines regulated in articles 5, 6 and 7». The 848’s, by contrast, carries one that exists nowhere else, and it is in its preamble: the communications «shall be filed in any event before 15 February of the year in which they are to take effect».
Worked example
A company with 2,000,000 euros of net turnover asks about its IAE for 2026. It is not exempt, so it must appear in the tax register. If it is taxed by municipal quota in a municipality whose census administration is the State’s, its form is the 840 and it files at the tax office for the place where it operates. If that same municipality has delegated census administration, its form stops being the 840 and becomes whichever one the delegated body decides, at that body’s counter. And if the same company were taxed by provincial or national quota, the answer would be form 840 in both cases, because article 91.1 allows only the municipal quota to be delegated. With two activities and three warehouses nobody works in, a municipal quota means five returns at two different offices; a provincial quota means two returns, because the three warehouses are listed in it and their surface areas added together. And since its turnover appears in its corporation tax return, it does not file form 848.
Frequently asked questions
What is Spanish form 840?
Who files form 840 and who files form 036 or 037?
What if my town hall has delegated census administration?
How many returns do I have to file?
Can I file it online?
Do I also have to file form 848?
When is form 848 filed?
And the reliefs? Are they requested separately?
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Sources
- Royal Decree 243/1995 on IAE administration: article 5 (who registers, and the two exceptions in its third paragraph), article 5.2 (one return per activity and one per indirect premises), article 8 (which office, and paragraph 2 for delegated administration) and article 9 (relief on application must be requested when registering) · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Order HAC/2572/2003 approving form 840: paragraph One (the form and its «list of premises» annex), Four.Three (the electronic channel dies one year after the deadline and paper then becomes compulsory) and Six (the deadline, which refers entirely back to the regulation) · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Order HAC/85/2003 on form 848: paragraph One (who is relieved of reporting net turnover) and its preamble, which sets the deadline before 15 February of the year the figure takes effect · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Consolidated Local Government Finance Act: article 82.1.c) (the exemption for net turnover below one million), article 90 (the register and the duty to report turnover) and article 91 (census administration is the State’s, and only the municipal quota may be delegated) · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Order HAP/2194/2013 on information returns: article 1, whose three lists enumerate 129 forms and include neither the 840 nor the 848, which is why this form’s paper channel is still alive · Boletín Oficial del Estado
Author: Thorben Rasmus Idel · Reviewed by: Nahar Geva · Last reviewed: