What Spanish form 296 is: the annual IRNR summary

What is Spanish form 296?

It is the annual summary of withholdings and payments on account of Non-Resident Income Tax obtained without a permanent establishment. Paragraph 5 of article 31 of the consolidated act obliges the withholder to file, on top of the periodic payment, «an annual summary of withholdings and payments on account with the content determined by regulation»¹, and article 15.2 of the regulation fixes that content: a nominal list of the payees³.

The Spanish payer files it, not the non-resident who is paid. And whoever files it has already filed their form 216s during the year, the quarterly or monthly returns through which the withholding was paid over.

Must it reconcile with my form 216s?

On withholdings yes. On amount no, and this is the part that wastes the most time.

Article 31.4.a) exempts from withholding the income exempt under article 14 or under a treaty, and it does so with an express condition: «without prejudice to the obligation to file provided for in paragraph 5 of this article»¹. Article 15.2 of the regulation closes it from the other side, requiring the nominal list to include «those paid income on which no withholding was practised under paragraph 4 of article 31»³.

So the annual summary is wider than the sum of the year's four form 216s, by construction. Anyone hunting a euro-for-euro reconciliation is hunting something the rule does not promise.

What must match to the cent is the withholding, because that is the same «amounts withheld and payments on account made» in both forms. If they differ there is a real error, and it is worth locating before filing.

Which payments belong on form 296?

Article 31.4.a) has three paragraphs and each does something different¹. Together they produce four cells and three answers.

The commonest case in the second row is interest paid to a European Union resident, which letter c) of article 14.1 declares exempt². A Spanish bank paying interest to a French saver withholds nothing and lists them on its annual summary all the same.

The third row is the exception to the exception: the second paragraph says there «shall be an obligation to withhold or make a payment on account» in respect of letters k) and l), which are dividends obtained by equivalent pension funds resident in the European Union and by collective investment undertakings under Directive 2009/65/EC². Exempt income, withheld anyway.

The fourth is the only income in the tax that appears on no form at all. The third paragraph says there is «no obligation to file a return in respect of the income referred to in article 14.1.d)»¹, and that letter is «income derived from Public Debt, obtained without a permanent establishment in Spain»². It is what a non-resident holder of Spanish treasury bills or government bonds is paid.

A worked example with real numbers

A Spanish company pays two German suppliers with no permanent establishment during 2025 and, on top of that, 60,000 € of interest to an individual resident in France.

The year's four form 216s add up to 100,000 € of income and 19,000 € of withholding. Form 296 reports 160,000 € and 19,000 €. The withholdings match, the amount does not, and 37.5% of the annual summary's amount was never in an autoliquidation. There is nothing to correct.

Had the same company also paid government-debt coupons to a non-resident, those would go on neither the 216 nor the 296.

When is form 296 due?

From 1 to 31 January of the following year, under article 11 of Order EHA/3290/2008 as it now reads⁴.

It was not always so, and the change dates from 2024. The original wording said, «in accordance with article 15.2 of the Regulation», that filing took place «in the first twenty natural days of January», with an exception reaching 31 January for anyone filing on computer-readable media and a bridging sentence treating electronic filing as such media. Between the two, nobody could reach the twenty-day general rule.

Article 2.3 of Order HAC/56/2024, with effect from 1 February 2024, rewrote it⁶: the window «shall run from 1 January to 31 January of the following year», with no format condition and no longer referring to the regulation.

Meanwhile article 15.2 of the regulation, whose latest version dates from 2014, still says twenty days³. Two rules of one system that stopped agreeing, and the one that governs the form is the Order that approves it.

The shift does not come from this Order

Article 4 of the same Order, the one for form 216, ends by saying that «due dates falling on a Saturday or a non-working day shall be understood as moved to the next working day»⁵. Article 11, seven articles away in the same norm, does not have it. The annual summary's shift comes from article 30.5 of Act 39/2015⁷.

The practical answer is the same. 31 January 2026 is a Saturday, and the tax agency publishes the 2025 annual summary under «Up to 2 February», alongside form 190 and form 180⁸. 31 January 2027 is a Sunday, so the 2026 summary falls due on 1 February 2027.

The second deadline, which is on no calendar

The second paragraph of article 11 requires the payee-record annexes called «Negotiable securities. Schedule of payments to taxpayers» and «Negotiable securities. Schedule of payment certificates» to be filed «during the natural month following the date of filing of form 210»⁴.

It is a due date hanging off when another form was filed rather than off the calendar, so two entities with the same reporting year have two different dates and no published table can hold them. The month runs from date to date, with the end-of-month clamp of article 30.4 of Act 39/2015⁷: file form 210 on 31 January and the annex is due on 28 February, not 3 March.

What the consolidated text still prints and no longer exists

Article 9 of the Order, in today's consolidated text, still describes paper filing for returns of up to fifteen payee records and «12 cm CD-R» media of up to 700 MB in ISO/IEC DIS 9660:1999 format⁵.

None of it survives. Article 12 of Order HAP/2194/2013 removed the paper route for information returns, and it did so by a general repealing clause. A repeal by clause leaves no note in a consolidated text, because the consolidator can only annotate what a rule expressly amends, so the article reads whole and apparently in force.

The complete rule, then: the form's own Order for what only it can say (the deadline, the annexes, the codes) and the general information-returns Order for the channel.

What you owe the payee

Besides the form, article 15.3 of the regulation requires a «certificate evidencing the withholdings practised, or the payments on account made, together with the remaining data concerning the taxpayer that must be included in the annual return» to be issued in the taxpayer's favour³. It is the document with which the non-resident evidences the Spanish withholding before their own administration, and it carries exactly the same data that goes into the summary.

Article 15.4 adds an obligation that is often forgotten: the withholding must be communicated to the payee at the moment the income is paid, stating the percentage applied³.