Rectifying invoices and the VAT nobody paid you

The short answer

A rectifying invoice is compulsory when something happens that modifies the taxable base of an invoice already issued³, and the commonest reason is that the customer does not pay. In that case the deadline that matters is not the one almost everyone quotes.

What binds is the short window, not the four years

Article 15.3 of the Spanish invoicing regulation says the rectifying invoice is issued «provided that four years have not elapsed from the moment the tax became chargeable»³. That is true, it is the deadline that appears in almost every explanation, and on an unpaid invoice it is useless, because a far narrower door closes first.

Condition 1 of article 80.Cuatro of the VAT Act requires that «a year has elapsed since the chargeable event of the VAT charged without payment having been obtained»¹. And letter B) of the same paragraph adds that «the adjustment must be made within the six months following the end» of that waiting period¹. Added together, the last possible date is month 18 from the invoice.

The four years fall thirty months after that. Anyone working to them is always late, and by then the VAT cannot be recovered by any route.

The 2023 reform moved three numbers, 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 2023⁴. All three changes point the same way:

The third is the one worth money. Condition 4 admitted only «a judicial claim against the debtor or a notarial demand against them», and today it adds «or any other means that reliably evidences the demand for payment»¹. A notarial demand costs what a notary costs. A registered fax with proof of receipt and certified text costs a few tens of euros. On a small invoice, that difference decided whether claiming was worth it at all.

Any guide written before 2023 gets all three points wrong at once.

The regulation took a year to catch up with the law

The law has admitted the reliable-means route since January 2023, but the list of documents you must attach to the communication is not in the law: it is in article 24 of the VAT regulation. That article has nine versions and the latest came into force on 1 January 2024, and 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»².

Throughout 2023, therefore, 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

Condition 1 asks for a year. 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»¹.

It says may, not must. With the six months of letter B) on top, the result is this:

A small business can therefore act at any point between month 6 and month 18, picking whichever option covers its date. A large company only has the second half of that span. That is twice the room, and it comes from a single word.

The 50-euro minimum exists only against a private individual

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 Value Added Tax, exceeds 50 euros»¹.

Those are two alternative limbs, not a general threshold. If the customer is a company or a professional there is no minimum amount and a twenty-euro invoice is perfectly adjustable. 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 several cases¹, and they are worth checking before counting any days:

• The part of the debt secured by a right in rem.
• The part guaranteed by a credit institution or a mutual guarantee company, or covered by a credit or surety insurance contract.
• Debts between related persons or entities under article 79.Cinco.
• Cases where the recipient is not established in the territory where the tax applies, in the Canary Islands, in Ceuta or in Melilla.
• Invoices whose tax point precedes an insolvency order, which go through paragraph Tres rather than paragraph Cuatro.

Debts owed by public bodies also appear on that list, and there is a nuance there that is easily lost: letter d) itself says the exclusion «shall not apply to the reduction of the taxable base carried out in accordance with paragraph four»¹. A town hall can be adjusted. What changes is the evidence: instead of the claim you need a certificate from the competent body of the debtor itself, with the report of its comptroller or treasurer, recording the acknowledgement of the obligation and its amount.

A partial payment carries VAT inside it

Rule 4 of the same paragraph 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»¹.

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.

The intuitive reading would claim the full 210 euros. The difference is 86.78 euros, and in an audit that is an assessment with interest.

Issuing is not enough: you must send it, then communicate

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 insolvency and bad-debt cases the taxable person «must also evidence that sending»². 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 issued². That form is the one the agency publishes as form 952, with its own procedure on the electronic office⁵.

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 here².

A worked example with real numbers

A small company invoices 1,000 euros plus 210 of VAT on 15 January 2026 and collects nothing.

Because its previous-year turnover was below 6,010,121.04 euros it can choose the six-month wait. 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, 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 shut³.

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 VAT¹.

You can check your own window and recoverable amount in the form 952 calculator, and see where the resulting negative base goes in the form 303 calculator.