Spain's módulos regime: who can still use it

The short answer

Objective assessment works out what a business earns by applying indices to base data (staff, floor area, contracted power) instead of deducting real costs from real income¹. That is why it is known as the módulos regime. Anyone taxed this way files form 131 each quarter.

And the fact almost no page has updated: the limits that let you stay in the regime dropped in 2025. The EUR 250,000 figure still being quoted came from a transitional provision that lists the years 2016 to 2024 and stops there¹.

Which limits actually apply

Article 31 of the income tax act excludes from the method anyone who, in the immediately preceding year, exceeds any of these magnitudes¹:

The last row does not move, and that detail orders everything else: the farming limit is written into article 31 and was never transitional. The other three were.

Why an extension announced three times never landed

Transitional provision 32 raised those three magnitudes "for the years 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024"¹. The government tried to stretch it three times:

• Royal Decree-Law 9/2024, of 23 December, was left without effect by the Resolution of 22 January 2025⁶;
• Royal Decree-Law 16/2025, of 23 December, by that of 27 January 2026⁵;
• Royal Decree-Law 2/2026, of 3 February, by that of 26 February 2026⁴.

All three were omnibus decree-laws, with dozens of measures inside, and none was repealed because of this extension in particular: the extension fell with the vehicle carrying it. That explains why so much guidance still gives EUR 250,000. It was written during the weeks when one of those extensions was briefly alive.

The annual order itself confirms the reading by how it is drafted. Article 3 of Order HAC/1425/2025, which develops the módulos regime for 2026, does not write out the general limit or the purchases limit: it refers to "that laid down, for the 2026 tax period, in article 31.1.3" of the act³. It does write the EUR 250,000 farming limit directly. The Ministry distinguishes exactly where the distinction matters.

The second exclusion system, which says nothing about money

Besides the amounts, article 3.d) of the annual order sets activity-specific magnitudes³:

A bakery with seven employees falls outside even if it bills EUR 40,000. And the two classes of magnitude are measured differently: employed staff by a weighted average over the period, vehicles on any day of the year. A hairdresser with seven people for one month and five for the other eleven averages below six and stays; a taxi driver with a fourth car for a single day is excluded.

Why the instalment is the same all four quarters

Article 110.1.b) of the Regulation works the instalment out on the net yield produced by applying the módulos "by reference to the base data of the first day of the year"². It does not look at what was sold in the quarter. While those base data do not change, the amount repeats.

The rate depends on salaried staff: 4 % generally, 3 % with a single salaried employee and 2 % with none².

There is a fourth case that is not another rate but another base: if no base datum can be determined, the same article turns the instalment into 2 % of the quarter's sales or income. And farming, livestock and forestry activities go to 2 % of the quarter under article 110.1.c), whatever the method.

The renunciation people make by accident

Article 33.1 of the Regulation allows two ways of renouncing the módulos regime². The first is the express one, in December. The second is the one that costs money:

"The renunciation of the objective assessment method shall also be treated as made when the return for the first quarter's instalment of the calendar year in which it is to take effect is filed within the regulatory period in the manner laid down for the direct assessment method."

In other words: filing a form 130 in April is the renunciation. No form, no signature, no warning. And article 33.3 keeps it in place "for a minimum period of three years", tacitly renewable.

Exclusion for breaching a magnitude works similarly but on a different calendar: it takes effect from the following 1 January, under article 34.1, and forces simplified direct assessment for the three years after².

A worked example with real numbers

A shop billed EUR 200,000 last year and bought EUR 40,000.

Under the 2024 limits it was still inside módulos: 200,000 is below 250,000. Under the 2026 limits it falls outside, because the limit is 150,000. The exclusion takes effect from 1 January 2027 and forces simplified direct assessment for the three years after.

If instead it stays in the regime, with a net módulos yield of EUR 20,000 and no salaried staff: the order's 5 % reduction leaves a base of EUR 19,000, 2 % of that is an instalment of EUR 380, and that same amount repeats all four quarters because the base comes from the 1 January base data. EUR 1,520 across the year.

The fourth quarter of 2026 falls due on 30 January 2027, a Saturday, so article 7 of Order EHA/672/2007 moves it to Monday 1 February⁷. The direct-debit window would have closed on 25 January.