Spain offers no immunity door like Austria and no once-in-a-lifetime pardon like Switzerland. It offers something more prosaic and, in practice, more predictable: a price list. Correct before any requerimiento and you file a supplementary self-assessment paying the surcharges of Article 27 of the tax code — 1% plus another 1% for each full month of delay, and from twelve months a flat 15% plus late interest. No penalty, no proceeding, no judgment of conduct. Correct after and you enter the penalty regime: fines of 50 to 150% of the unpaid amount, gradable — reducible on agreement and prompt payment, but a different league.
The price, itemised
A spontaneous supplementary return one year late costs the tax plus a surcharge of roughly 13%; beyond a year, tax plus 15% plus interest from month twelve. Surcharges shrink a further 25% on timely payment. Against that, the penalty route starts at 50% — and climbs with concealment or fraudulent means. The gap between the two columns of the list is routinely a multiple of three or four; and the only thing that moves a taxpayer from one column to the other is the date of the first requerimiento. Which is why the Renta aviso is valuable information: it documents that the cheap window is still open — and that someone is already looking.
Austria forgives exact sequence, Switzerland forgives once, Germany demands the whole decade. Spain does not forgive: it charges by tariff. Predictability is its form of mercy.
The criminal threshold: €120,000
Above €120,000 of tax defrauded per year and per tax, the matter jumps to the Criminal Code. Even there an exit exists: complete and truthful regularisation before proceedings begin — acknowledging and paying the debt in full — excludes criminal liability. It is Spain's version of the emergency door, and it shares the logic of everything else here: it arrives early or not at all. At amounts of that scale, nothing on this page substitutes for a criminal tax lawyer from day one.
What a crypto regularisation corrects
The usual pieces: undeclared swaps from rotation-heavy years, airdrops classified into the wrong base, omitted staking income, unfiled Forms 721 and wealth-tax mismatches. They should travel together: a supplementary return that fixes the Renta but stays silent on the 721 exposes exactly the inconsistency data matching detects best.
The sequence
- Reconstruct before deciding. All open years, full FIFO, bases correctly labelled, year-end valuations — the real number surprises in both directions.
- Compute both columns. Surcharges today against probable penalties tomorrow: the decision is made with numbers, not anxiety.
- File complete, once. Renta, 721 and wealth tax coherent with each other. Piecemeal corrections invite review of the whole.
- Near or above €120,000 per year: criminal counsel first. The exemption demands truth and completeness — and admits no second attempt.
- If a requerimiento arrived: change playbooks. Spontaneity is over; now you manage a proceeding, reductions and agreement — with representation.
Surcharges, penalties and thresholds depend on facts and dates this page does not know. It frames the decision; it does not make it, and reading it creates no professional relationship.