Recovering VAT on an unpaid invoice
If a customer has not paid you, Spanish law lets you recover the VAT you already paid over. Check whether you still can, how much, and by when.
| If you take the six-month wait | 15 July 2026 to 15 January 2027 |
| If you take the one-year wait | 15 January 2027 to 15 July 2027 |
| Four-year limitnever binds on this route | 15 January 2030 |
- Your turnover gives you both waiting periods: you can act between month 6 and month 18 by picking whichever option covers your date.
Other details: who owes you, your turnover and the VAT rate
Against a private individual the unpaid base must exceed €50.00. Until 2022 the minimum was €300.00.
Below €6,010,121.04 of turnover in the previous year, the waiting period of condition 1 may be six months or one year, at your choice.
Video: how to use the calculator
What binds is the short window, not the four years
The deadline almost everyone quotes is the one in article 15.3 of the invoicing regulation: a rectifying invoice cannot be issued more than four years after the tax point. That is true, and on an unpaid invoice it is useless, because a far narrower door closes first. Condition 1 of article 80.Cuatro requires a year to pass from the tax point without payment, or six months if the creditor is small, and letter B) of the same paragraph gives «the six months following the end» of that waiting period to make the adjustment. Added together, the last possible date is month 18 from the tax point. The four years fall thirty months after that. Anyone working to the four-year figure is always late, and the VAT is simply lost.
The 2023 reform moved three numbers in the same paragraph, all in your favour
Article 77 of Law 31/2022 rewrote conditions 3 and 4 of letter A) and the whole of letter B), with effect from 1 January 2023. The threshold below which an invoice to a final consumer cannot be adjusted fell from 300 euros to 50: six times lower, so small invoices that used to be outside the regime came inside it. The window in letter B) went from three months to six, twice the room. And condition 4 stopped treating «a judicial claim against the debtor or a notarial demand» as the only routes, admitting «any other means that reliably evidences the demand for payment». That is the change that is worth money: a notarial demand costs what a notary costs, and a registered fax with proof of receipt and certified text costs a few tens of euros. Any guide written before 2023 gets all three wrong.
The regulation took a year to catch up with the law
The law admitted the reliable-means route from January 2023, and the list of documents you must attach to the communication lives in article 24 of the VAT regulation, not in the law. That article has nine versions and the latest came into force on 1 January 2024: it is the one that added to its letter b) the words «or any other means that reliably evidences the demand for payment from the debtor». Throughout 2023 the law permitted a registered fax while the regulation’s list of evidence still named only the court and the notary. The lesson is general and costs one lookup: when a law changes, check the date of the latest version of its regulation before assuming the implementing rules moved with it.
A small creditor’s waiting period is an option, and it doubles the span
Condition 1 asks for a year from the tax point. It then adds that where the creditor’s turnover in the immediately preceding calendar year did not exceed 6,010,121.04 euros, «the period referred to in this condition 1 may be six months or one year». It says may, not must, so a small business chooses. With the six months of letter B) on top, a large company has a single window, from month 12 to month 18. A small one has two: month 6 to 12 if it takes the short wait, and month 12 to 18 if it takes the year. In practice it can act at any point between month 6 and month 18 by picking whichever option covers its date, which is twice the span a large company gets.
The 50-euro threshold exists only against a final consumer
Condition 3 requires that «the recipient of the transaction acts in the capacity of a business or professional, or otherwise, that the taxable base of that transaction, excluding VAT, exceeds 50 euros». Those are two alternative limbs, not a general threshold: if the customer is a company or a professional there is no minimum amount at all and a twenty-euro invoice can be adjusted. The minimum appears only when the debtor is a private individual. And it is measured on the unpaid base excluding VAT, not on the invoice total, so a partial payment can push an invoice that started above the threshold below it.
Five doors close before the dates matter at all
Paragraph Cinco excludes the adjustment in four cases and adds a fifth through territory. You cannot adjust the part of the debt secured by a right in rem, nor the part guaranteed by a credit institution or a mutual guarantee company or covered by credit or surety insurance, nor a debt between related parties under article 79.Cinco, nor any case where the recipient is not established in the territory where the tax applies, the Canary Islands, Ceuta or Melilla. The fourth exclusion, for debts owed by public bodies, carries a nuance that is easily lost: letter d) itself says it does not apply to the bad-debt reduction of paragraph Cuatro, so a public body can in fact be adjusted; only the claim is replaced by a certificate from the competent body of the debtor itself. And rule 3 closes the bad-debt route for invoices whose tax point precedes an insolvency order: those go through paragraph Tres, with its two months.
A partial payment carries VAT inside it, proportionally
Rule 4 of paragraph Cinco is a short sentence with expensive consequences: «In cases of partial payment prior to the said adjustment, Value Added Tax shall be deemed to be included in the amounts received and in the same proportion as the part of the consideration satisfied.» The intuitive reading is that what was collected covers the base first and what remains outstanding is mostly VAT. The law says the opposite: every euro collected contains base and VAT in the same proportion as the invoice. On an invoice of 1,000 euros plus 210 of VAT with 500 euros collected, those 500 contain 413.22 of base and 86.78 of VAT already collected, so the recoverable VAT is 123.22 euros. The intuitive reading would claim 210, and eighty-six euros seventy-eight is, in an audit, an assessment with interest.
Issuing is not enough: you must send it, then communicate within a month
Article 24.1 of the regulation requires the rectifying invoice to be issued and sent to the recipient, and adds that the reduction of the base «shall be conditional upon the issue and sending of the invoice», with the particularity that in the cases of paragraphs Tres and Cuatro the taxable person «must also evidence that sending». This is not paperwork: without proof of dispatch there is no reduction. Then comes the communication, and the regulation calls it by no number at all: article 24.2.a).2 requires it to be communicated «electronically, through the form available for that purpose on the electronic office of the State Tax Administration Agency», within one month from the date the rectifying invoice was issued. That form is the one the agency publishes as form 952. The communication must also state that the adjustment does not relate to secured, guaranteed or insured debts, nor to related parties, nor to transactions whose recipient is not established here.
Worked example
A small company invoices 1,000 euros plus 210 of VAT on 15 January 2026 and collects nothing. Because its turnover in the previous year was below 6,010,121.04 euros it can choose the six-month wait, so from 15 July 2026 it may adjust the taxable base and it has until 15 January 2027 to issue the rectifying invoice. From that issue date it has one month to file the form on the tax agency’s electronic office, so 15 February 2027 at the latest. If it prefers to wait the full year, its window runs from 15 January to 15 July 2027: both are valid, and between them it can act at any point between month 6 and month 18. A large company with the same invoice would only have the second. The four-year limit in the invoicing regulation falls on 15 January 2030, two and a half years after the last window has shut. And if the customer had paid 500 euros before the adjustment, the recoverable VAT would not be 210 euros but 123.22, because rule 4 treats those 500 as already containing 86.78 euros of VAT.
Frequently asked questions
How long must I wait to recover VAT on an unpaid invoice?
And how long do I then have to do it?
Do I have to go to court or to a notary to claim the debt?
Is there a minimum amount?
My customer paid part of it. How much VAT can I recover?
What if my customer goes insolvent?
Can I adjust an invoice to a town hall that has not paid me?
And if I am paid later?
Is issuing the rectifying invoice enough?
Does the regulation mention form 952?
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Sources
- Ley 37/1992 del IVA, artículo 80: los apartados Tres y Cuatro, el umbral de 50 euros de la condición 3.ª, la reclamación por cualquier medio fehaciente de la condición 4.ª, los seis meses de la letra B) y las cinco exclusiones del apartado Cinco · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Reglamento del IVA, artículo 24: la obligación de expedir Y REMITIR la factura rectificativa, la comunicación electrónica en el plazo de un mes y la lista de documentos que la acompañan · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Reglamento de facturación, artículo 15: cuándo es obligatoria una factura rectificativa y el límite de cuatro años desde el devengo para expedirla · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Ley 31/2022 de Presupuestos Generales del Estado, artículo 77: la norma que bajó el umbral de 300 a 50 euros, admitió cualquier medio fehaciente de reclamación y amplió de tres a seis meses el plazo para modificar · Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Modelo 952: comunicación de la modificación de la base imponible en supuestos de concurso y por crédito incobrable (procedimiento G416) · Agencia Tributaria
- ¿Cómo puedo recuperar el IVA impagado por mis clientes? Requisitos, con las condiciones de la letra A) del artículo 80.Cuatro · Agencia Tributaria
- ¿Cómo puedo recuperar el IVA impagado por mis clientes? Procedimiento que debe seguirse para modificar la base imponible · Agencia Tributaria
Author: Thorben Rasmus Idel · Reviewed by: Nahar Geva · Last reviewed: