The Spanish tax office froze your bank account without warning

The case, in five lines

What is brought

Challenge to the seizure order on the closed grounds of article 170.3 LGT and, where the enforcement order was not validly served, challenge to that order on the grounds of article 167.3 LGT, with a request to release the unseizable balance and, where appropriate, to suspend enforcement.

Before which court

If the debt is owed to the State: an optional reposición appeal to the collection office that ordered the seizure, or a claim before the TEAR (the regional tax tribunal), and afterwards the contencioso-administrativo chamber of the Tribunal Superior de Justicia (the regional high court) under article 10.1.d LJCA. If it is owed to a town council: a reposición appeal to the council, compulsory except in large municipalities, and afterwards the contencioso-administrativo section of the Tribunal de Instancia (the first-instance court). The prior attempt at an out-of-court dispute resolution method under article 5 of LO 1/2025 is not required, as it belongs to the civil order: here the prior step is the administrative route.

Deadline

One month, counted date to date, from the day after notification of the seizure order, both for the reposición appeal (art. 223.1 LGT) and for the claim (art. 235.1 LGT). It is a strict deadline: once it expires, the seizure becomes final. A shorter one runs alongside it: the bank pays the retained money to the Treasury twenty calendar days after the day following the attachment (art. 79.6 RGR). Against the decision closing the administrative route, two months from the day after its notification (art. 46.1 LJCA).

Who can bring it

The debtor who holds the account, and also the co-holders, who must be notified of the seizure order under article 170.1 LGT. It is brought against the authority that ordered the seizure: the Agencia Tributaria (the Spanish tax agency), the regional tax authority, the town council or the provincial body that collects on its behalf.

Financial risk

The economic-administrative route does not generate costs, unless the tribunal finds recklessness or bad faith. In court the loser-pays rule applies: if you lose, costs may be awarded against you, which courts usually cap at a maximum figure. Not challenging also has a price: the debt continues with the 20% enforcement surcharge, late payment interest and the costs of enforcement, and the authority may go on to seize other accounts, your salary or real estate.

Seizing without warning is lawful; seizing without a served enforcement order is not

The first thing is to know what should have been served on you and what should not. The seizure of the account is not announced in advance: article 79 of the Reglamento General de Recaudación (the General Collection Regulation) requires the bank to retain the funds immediately, and article 170.1 LGT provides that the seizure order is served on the debtor once the seizure has been made. Finding out through your bank is not, in itself, a defect. That is how the system works, and a challenge that complains only about that will fail.

What did have to reach you beforehand are two acts. First, the assessment, with its voluntary payment period. Then the enforcement order, which under article 167.1 LGT starts the procedure through a notification that identifies the debt, calculates the surcharges and requires payment. Article 70 of the Regulation requires it to warn that, if you do not pay in time with the reduced 10% surcharge, your assets will be seized with the 20% surcharge and late payment interest.

That is why the useful question is not whether you were warned of the seizure, but whether the enforcement order and, before it, the assessment were validly served on you. If the answer is no, the seizure falls, and you also recover something almost nobody values: when the authority serves the enforcement order properly again, you will have time to pay with the 10% surcharge instead of 20% plus interest and costs. Even where the debt is real, that difference justifies the challenge.

Two acts, two closed lists of grounds: where your case fits

Against the seizure order, article 170.3 LGT admits only four grounds: extinction of the debt or limitation of the right to demand payment, failure to serve the enforcement order, breach of the rules governing seizure, and suspension of the collection procedure. Against the enforcement order, article 167.3 LGT admits five: extinction or limitation; deferral, instalments or set-off requested during the voluntary period; failure to serve the assessment; annulment of the assessment; and an error preventing identification of the debtor or the debt.

What appears in neither list is the merits. That the assessment was wrong, that the sale of the shares actually produced a loss, or that the fine was unfair cannot be argued in enforcement, and a challenge built on that is dismissed without examining it. The only door to the merits is indirect: if the assessment was never served on you, it is not final, and the ground in article 167.3.c) forces it to be served, which then opens its own period for appeal.

The two lists work in a chain. If the enforcement order was not validly served on you, your time to challenge it has not started to run, and the pleading is aimed at the same time at the seizure order, on the ground in article 170.3.b), and at the enforcement order you have just learned of, on the grounds in article 167.3. Challenging only one of the two acts is giving arguments away. And if during the voluntary period you requested a deferral that was still undecided, the enforcement period should never have opened at all.

Service through the BOE: the ground that brings down most seizures

Article 112 LGT only allows the taxpayer to be summoned by notice in the BOE when service has not been possible for reasons not attributable to the authority, after two attempts at the tax address, or a single one if the addressee is recorded as unknown, with the circumstances recorded in the file. Once the notice is published there are fifteen calendar days to appear, and if nobody appears service is deemed made. Since article 109 LGT refers to the general rules, article 42.2 LPAC also requires the second attempt to be made within the following three days and in a different time slot, at least three hours apart.

The Tribunal Supremo (the Supreme Court) has held that service by summons to appear is a last resort and that complying with the letter of the provision is not enough: if the authority knew of another address, or could find it without effort in its own records, such as an income tax return filed with the new address, it had to try there before turning to the gazette. That is the line of your case. There is a counterweight: someone who moved without notifying the change and without leaving any trace, refused the letter or failed to collect notices that were actually left will hardly be able to rely on their own lack of diligence.

There is a nuance almost nobody knows that decides the deadline. Under article 112.3 LGT, when an act is deemed served because the taxpayer did not appear, the taxpayer is deemed served with the subsequent steps and orders of that procedure; only assessments and decisions to sell seized assets must be served again. If the enforcement order was validly published in the BOE, do not wait for a letter with the seizure order: count the month from the day you learned of the seizure. And if you are obliged to deal with the authorities electronically, article 43.2 LPAC treats as rejected any notification you do not open within ten calendar days.

Which part of the balance is untouchable and which part is seizable savings

Article 171.3 LGT protects wages, salary or pension where they are habitually paid into the seized account, applying the limits of article 607 LEC. Whatever does not exceed the national minimum wage cannot be seized, and the excess is seized in bands: 30% up to twice the minimum wage, 50% up to three times, 60% up to four times, 75% up to five times and 90% above that. The calculation is made on the net amount, after deducting withholdings and social security contributions.

The trap lies in what counts as salary. The same provision says it is the amount paid into the account under that heading in the month the seizure is made or, failing that, in the previous month. If the seizure takes place on the 4th and your salary came in on the 28th, the limits apply to that salary; what built up in earlier months is savings and can be seized in full, the rental deposit included. Nor is money you transfer yourself from another account treated as salary: the protection follows the payment from the employer or the paying body, not the money.

Article 171.2 LGT adds another defence: in accounts with several holders only the debtor's share is seized, and the balance is presumed to be split equally unless a different actual ownership is proved. If the tax office has retained the full debt in two banks at once, the excess collides with the proportionality required by article 169.1 LGT and its release is requested. Where all the money belongs to someone else, the proper route is a third-party ownership claim, which we explain in a separate guide.

Limitation: four years that only restart with acts that actually reached you

Article 66.b) LGT sets a four-year limitation period for the right to demand payment of assessed debts, and article 67.1 makes it run from the day after the end of the voluntary period. That period is interrupted and starts again with the acts listed in article 68.2: any action by the authority genuinely aimed at collection and carried out with the formal knowledge of the taxpayer, any appeal or claim, and any step by the taxpayer leading to payment.

The key expression is formal knowledge. An enforcement order served invalidly interrupts nothing, and neither does a step you were never formally told about. That is why reviewing limitation is an exercise in dates, act by act: when the voluntary period ended, which steps the authority relies on as interruptions, and when and how each one was served on you. If the assessment itself was never validly served, the question changes: what may have become time-barred is the right to assess under article 66.a), with its own starting point.

Two consequences almost nobody takes advantage of. First: article 165.2 LGT requires enforcement to be suspended automatically and without security when it is shown that the debt is time-barred, paid, remitted, set off, deferred or suspended, or that there was a clerical, arithmetical or factual error; a written request with the evidence to the collection office is enough. Second: in taxes collected periodically by bill, such as the IBI (the local property tax), the assessments after the first registration are served collectively, so arguing that the bill never arrived rarely succeeds; what must be served individually is the enforcement order.

Twenty days for the money, one month for the challenge, then the court

Article 79.6 of the General Collection Regulation sets the shortest window and the one that matters most: the bank pays the retained money to the Treasury once twenty calendar days have passed from the day after the attachment, unless before then it receives an instruction to the contrary from the collection office. Within those days, the unseizable salary, the excess, the co-holder's share or the ground for automatic suspension is put to the collection office with documents. If the office accepts it, it instructs the bank to release that amount and the money never leaves.

The challenge is a different matter with its own deadline. Against the seizure order you may bring an optional reposición appeal to the office that ordered it or a claim before the TEAR, in both cases within one month from the day after notification under articles 223.1 and 235.1 LGT, but not both at once: article 222.2 LGT only admits whichever is filed first. Challenging does not by itself stop collection; suspension is requested separately, with security or, in the closed cases, without it. The administrative route is compulsory before going to court, and the prior out-of-court dispute resolution step under article 5 of LO 1/2025, which belongs to the civil order, is not required.

If the debt is owed to the State and the TEAR decides, the court challenge goes to the contencioso-administrativo chamber of the Tribunal Superior de Justicia, under article 10.1.d) LJCA, within two months from notification of the decision under article 46.1 LJCA; August does not count towards that period. If the debt is owed to a town council, the reposición appeal is compulsory except in large municipalities, which have their own economic-administrative body, and the court challenge goes to the contencioso-administrativo section of the Tribunal de Instancia. Winning after the money has been paid over obliges the authority to return it with late payment interest.

How we run the case, step by step

1. 1

   Fixing today the two dates that govern everything

   The bank's record fixes the date of the hold, which opens the twenty calendar days of article 79.6 RGR, and the seizure order is located on the electronic office of the authority that issued it. As a precaution, the month to challenge is counted from the day you learned of the seizure.

2. 2

   Requesting the file of notifications

   Within the time allowed for the challenge, access to the file is requested, as article 223.2 LGT permits: delivery records for the assessment and the enforcement order, with the date, time and reason for each attempt, and the BOE notice. Without those papers nobody knows which ground supports the case.

3. 3

   Releasing the unseizable amount now

   Before the twenty days expire, a written request is filed with the collection office attaching the payslip and the statement for the month, the evidence of the co-holder's share, or the evidence of payment or limitation, asking for release of what article 171 LGT protects and, where appropriate, for automatic suspension under article 165.2.

4. 4

   Challenge against the seizure order and the enforcement order

   Within the month, a reposición appeal or a claim before the TEAR is filed, never both, attacking the seizure order on the grounds of article 170.3 LGT and, if the enforcement order was not validly served, that order as well on the grounds of article 167.3. Suspension is requested where the amount justifies it.

5. 5

   Watching for the decision and for silence

   The reposición appeal is decided quickly or is deemed rejected, and then a claim before the TEAR can be brought; the claim takes longer. Every notification is monitored, because the two months of article 46.1 LJCA start from the decision that closes the administrative route.

6. 6

   Court proceedings and recovery of the money

   If the administrative route does not resolve it, the case goes to the Tribunal Superior de Justicia or, for local debts, to the Tribunal de Instancia, with an interim measure if needed. A favourable judgment annuls the seizure and obliges the authority to return what was paid over, with late payment interest.

The law that applies

• Art. 167 LGT. Starts enforcement with a served order that identifies the debt, calculates the surcharges and requires payment, gives it the enforceability of a court judgment, and limits objections to five grounds: extinction or limitation; deferral, instalments or set-off requested in the voluntary period and other causes of suspension; failure to serve the assessment; annulment of the assessment; and an error preventing identification of the debtor or the debt. BOE-A-2003-23186
• Art. 170 LGT. Requires each seizure to be recorded in an order served, once made, on the taxpayer, the co-holders and the spouse where the assets are community property, and admits only four grounds against it: extinction or limitation, failure to serve the enforcement order, breach of the rules governing seizure, and suspension of the collection procedure. BOE-A-2003-23186
• Art. 171 LGT. Governs seizure at credit institutions: allows it to extend to the debtor's other balances at the institution, limits the seizure of joint accounts to the taxpayer's share, presuming equal shares unless a different actual ownership is proved, and requires the LEC limits to be respected on salary or pension paid in during the month of the seizure or, failing that, the previous month. BOE-A-2003-23186
• Art. 112 LGT. Allows service by summons to appear through a BOE notice only after two failed attempts at the tax address for reasons not attributable to the authority, or one if the addressee is unknown; gives fifteen calendar days to appear and, if the taxpayer does not appear, treats them as served with subsequent steps, except assessments and decisions to sell. BOE-A-2003-23186
• Arts. 66 a 68 LGT. Set a four-year limitation period for the right to assess and to demand payment, the latter running from the day after the end of the voluntary period, and interrupt it, restarting the count, through collection actions taken with the taxpayer's formal knowledge, through appeals or claims, and through steps by the taxpayer leading to payment. BOE-A-2003-23186
• Art. 165 LGT. Requires enforcement to be suspended automatically and without security when the taxpayer shows a clerical, arithmetical or factual error, payment, remission, set-off, deferral, suspension or limitation, and governs third-party ownership and priority claims. BOE-A-2003-23186
• Art. 79 RGR. Governs the seizure of money in accounts: identifies the known account and allows the seizure to extend to the debtor's other balances at the institution, requires the bank to retain immediately, and orders the retained money to be paid to the Treasury after twenty calendar days from the day after the attachment unless the collection office instructs otherwise. BOE-A-2005-14803
• Art. 607 LEC. Declares unseizable any wage, salary or pension not exceeding the national minimum wage and seizes the excess in bands of 30, 50, 60, 75 and 90%, calculated on the net amount and also applicable to income from self-employed professional and business activities. BOE-A-2000-323

Each article checked against the consolidated text published in the BOE (the Spanish official gazette).

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