IRPF for the self-employed in Spain: payments on account and withholdings

The payment on account (pago fraccionado) is the quarterly advance of your IRPF. Instead of paying the whole tax in your annual income tax return, you pay amounts on account every quarter. At the end of the year those payments are deducted from the amount due in your return.

If you are taxed under estimación directa (your profit is the real difference between income and expenses), your form is the 130. The amount is 20% of the net profit accumulated from the start of the year to the last day of the quarter, minus the payments on account and the withholdings already borne. The legal basis is in articles 99 and following of the Ley del IRPF (the Spanish personal income tax act) and 109 and following of its Reglamento (the implementing regulation).

If you are taxed under estimación objetiva (the módulos regime), your form is the 131. Here your profit is not worked out as real income minus real expenses, but by applying the signs, indices and módulos that Hacienda (the Spanish tax authority, also known as the AEAT) sets each year, and you pay a percentage of that result. You do not choose freely between the 130 and the 131: it depends on the regime you are registered under.

There is an important exception for professionals: if in the previous calendar year at least 70% of the income from your activity was subject to withholding or to an ingreso a cuenta (the equivalent advance payment on income in kind), you are not obliged to file the payment on account. For as long as you are obliged, you must file the form even if the result is zero or negative. You can see the price and the details on our irpf_130 and modelo_131 pages.

When you pay a payroll or an invoice from a professional that carries withholding, you do not keep that money: you withhold it and pay it to Hacienda on behalf of the person receiving the payment. Form 111 is the quarterly self-assessment of those IRPF withholdings applied to employees and to professionals (and other cases such as certain prizes or income).

Form 115 covers a different situation: withholdings on the rent of urban property when you are the tenant (for example, the premises or the office where you carry out your activity). You withhold a percentage of the rent from the landlord and pay it to Hacienda every quarter.

The most frequent error is mixing up the two forms: putting the rent of your premises on the 111, or professionals' invoices on the 115. Hacienda cross-checks this data against the annual summaries (190 and 180) and spots the mismatch. You can see the details on our irpf_111 and modelo_115 pages.

Forms 190 and 180 are informative returns: you pay nothing with them, they simply summarise for Hacienda what you already paid during the year through the quarterly forms.

Form 190 is the annual summary of form 111: it gathers all the withholdings on employment income and on professional activities for the tax year, person by person. Form 180 is the annual summary of form 115: it gathers the withholdings on the rent of urban property.

The golden rule is that these summaries must match the sum of the four quarters. A mismatch between what you declared in the quarterly forms and what you report in the annual one is one of the most common causes of a formal request from the tax authority. You can see the details on our modelo_190 and modelo_180 pages.

The payments on account (130 and 131) and the withholdings (111 and 115) follow the same quarterly rhythm: the first quarter from 1 to 20 April, the second from 1 to 20 July and the third from 1 to 20 October.

The fourth quarter has a nuance worth remembering: payments on account 130 and 131 are filed from 1 to 30 January of the following year, while withholdings 111 and 115 are filed from 1 to 20 January. They do not coincide.

Annual summaries 190 and 180 are filed in January of the year after the tax year. If the last day of the deadline falls on a non-working day (Saturday, Sunday or public holiday), the deadline ends on the next working day. The same rule applies to all the deadlines above.

A practical detail: if you pay by direct debit from your bank account, the deadline for setting up the direct debit closes several days before the end of the filing period. Managora reminds you of every deadline in good time, so that none of them slips past you.

There are four common slip-ups: mixing up the 111 with the 115, forgetting to file the 130 when the result is zero (it is still compulsory), the annual summary not matching the quarterly forms, and filing after the deadline. Filing late has a cost: a surcharge for late filing that grows the longer you delay, and a possible penalty if Hacienda is the first to claim.

Managora reviews which forms apply to you according to your regime (estimación directa or módulos) and your activity, calculates them from your data, files them on time with the Agencia Tributaria (the Spanish tax agency) and checks that the annual summaries match the quarters. You do not have to wrestle with the sede electrónica (the tax authority's online filing portal) or keep an eye on the calendar: we prepare it and we file it for you.