The Bill on the Tax on Certain Digital Services is published

Spain - 28 / 02 / 2020

Spain Tax Alert

The Official Parliamentary Gazette of February 28, 2020 publishes the initiation of the passage through Parliament of the Bill on the Tax on Certain Digital Services (called the Google Tax) to which we referred in our Alert of February 18, 2020.

The preamble recalls that Spain's creation of this tax is temporary until the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) completes its works to adapt the international tax system to the digitalization of the economic, through the “re-allocation of taxing rights to market countries or territories when participating in the economic activity, without the need for a physical presence, creating a new nexus for that purpose”, in clear reference to pillars 1 and 2 of the OECD.

The wording of the bill now undergoing passage through Parliament substantially coincides with that of the bill approved on January 18, 2019 by the Council of Ministers, which was not processed due to the dissolution of the Parliament after the call for elections. We recall that this is an indirect tax charged to companies whose global net revenues in the preceding calendar year are above 750 million euros and that obtain revenues in Spain (also in the preceding calendar year) of at least 3 million euros derived from the provision of online advertising services, online intermediation services or the sale of data generated on the basis of information provided by the user of digital interfaces.

The bill maintains the tax rate at 3%, announced previously, and the scope of the tax excludes sales of goods or services between users in the context of an online intermediation service, and sales of goods or services contracted online on the website of the supplier of those goods or services in which the supplier does not act as intermediary.

Although the tax will be assessed every three months, the first assessment in 2020 is postponed until December 20. In that assessment, presumably (depending on how the passage through Parliament goes), taxpayers will report tax for the second and third quarters of 2020. The single transitional provision establishes that during the period from the date of entry into force of the Law to the following December 31, the determination of whether the 3 million euro income threshold is exceeded shall be done taking into account the revenues existing from the entry into force of the law until the end of the assessment period, annualized.