BRIEFING NOTE FORM 720

As a result of the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union declaring the informative form of assets and rights abroad to be contrary to the European legal system, with regard to its sanctioning regime and the non-applicability of statutes of limitation for unjustified capital gains, the Spanish legislator has adapted Spanish legislation to comply with European requirements in terms of the free movement of capital.

Thus, the obligation to file information form 720 remains in force for 2021, in the same form as in previous years, i.e. with the same content, so that the obligations to report are as follows:

• Accounts located abroad.
• Shares, assets, securities or rights representing the share capital, own funds or assets of all types of entities, or the transfer to third parties of own capital; as well as life or disability insurance policies of which they are policyholders and annuities or temporary annuities of which they are beneficiaries
• Real estate and rights over real estate owned by them and located abroad.

As a recent development, Law 11/2021, of 9 July, on measures to prevent and combat tax fraud, has introduced a new reporting obligation, such as virtual currencies located abroad, presumably if they exceed 50,000 euros, like the rest of the obligations.

However, the obligation to declare these virtual currencies is subject to their regulatory development, which has not yet taken place, so it seems that their inclusion in the form will not be mandatory for the 2021 tax year, the deadline for which is 31 March 2022.    Moreover, it remains to be seen whether they will be included in the same form 720 or whether a new form will be created for these virtual currencies, as it seems it will be in the end.

In short, the obligation to declare remains in force and the next declaration relating to 2021 must be made during the current month of March.

The most substantial modification to the legal regime of this information model is the change in the penalty regime for non-compliance or inaccurate compliance with it, moving from disproportionate fines to the penalties established in the general regime of the General Tax Law.