It hurts a bit to start this blog with an article about taxes, but Spring is the time you usually have to do these and during the confinement, it is a welcome distraction anyway :smirk:​. This article will contain general tips and won’t get into too much detail. If you have questions it might make sense to contact a tax advisor that maybe even speaks your language to clear things up.

Cl@ve PIN

Prerequisite

  • NIE
  • Spanish mobile phone number (+34 XXX XXXXXX)

Process

Corona disclaimer: The tax offices are closed for now, but it looks like you can still do this via phone.

The Spanish tax authorities came up with a decent system to let you do your taxes without sending in any paper. (Partly funded by the :eu:!) I highly recommend getting registered. As an NIE holder, you will not have a digital certificate, thus you will need to register yourself personally wit an appointment (cita previa). You can schedule one on the official page of the Agencia Tributaria (Spanish tax office) here.

During the process, you will need to also input your support number (numero de soporte). You will find this number on the back of your NIE. You will need to add a C in the front and then fill up with zeros so that your number will have 9 digits in total. For example, 9999999 would become C09999999. Don’t ask me who came up with this :expressionless:​…

Once you have registered, it makes sense to use the official mobile app to generate the PIN for every authentication challenge:

Google Play
App Store

taxdown.es

Now you could go ahead the use the tax office’s not so marvelous web tool, but why would you do this in 2020? Luckily last year, some guys in Madrid came up with the idea of creating an app named taxdown for doing the taxes in an easier and faster way, which I would recommend to use. They are an official partner of the Spanish tax office, thus you must use your Cl@ve PIN. Unfortunately, it is only available in Spanish, but the whole process is based on really easy to understand questions, which will guide you through it.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that they do have to make some money, so they will charge you 35 Euros if you save more than that amount compared to the official web tool. I think this is a fair deal.