The DAC7 directive that emerged in Brussels comes into full force in Spain after the last legal steps. It will directly regularize the income of digital commerce platforms such as Wallapop, Vinted, Airbnb or eBay, among many others, when certain limits are passed. It will provide the Tax Agency with more information to avoid escaping from the treasury if it is appropriate to pay taxes or declare the activity.
Until now seen as free trade havens, users of applications for buying and selling online products and services will see great changes in the tax landscape. The regulations establish the obligation to report the movements of those that exceed 2,000 euros per year in sales or 30 transactions in a year, leading them, through the platforms, to declare everything to the Treasury.
A direct communication channel between the platforms and the Government is the format selected to carry out this new procedure. It will be Wallapop or Vinted who must provide the institutions with the personal and fiscal data of the user who is billing over 2,000 euros annually or making more than 30 sales. Something you are already doing through emails and messages in the apps.
If the user refused to enter their information correctly, they would be facing fines of up to 300 euros and/or, in the worst case, the permanent suspension of their profile.
The range of activities covered by this new legislation includes the leasing of real estate for residential or commercial use (including parking spaces), personal services, the sale of goods and the rental or transfer of any means of transport. It is important to emphasize that it only affects platforms that host independent sellers. Therefore, it does not affect any e-commerce.
To better understand the impact it will have on users, these are the keys to DAC7.
This new regulation will apply to all platforms for the sale and rental of online products or services, affecting only users who invoice more than 2,000 euros or carry out a number of more than 30 annual transactions.
It should be noted that “both platform operators with tax residence in Spain, as well as those who, without having this residence, have a permanent establishment in Spanish territory, and also those who, being foreign operators, facilitate the carrying out activities for users residing in Spain,” says Benja Anglès, expert professor in taxation and tax law at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). That is, platforms born in Spain and foreign ones that allow you to operate from here.
The European Union established a deadline for transposition of the regulations dated December 31, 2022, for its application from January 1, 2023. The 2023 data had to be sent before January 31, 2024. But the The Tax Agency has been fair with these deadlines, so finally the last legal steps have been taken in February.
Thus, the affected companies will have until April 6 to request the seller for the missing information and present the data declaration of these users for their activity in 2023. Again, as long as they exceed the limits.
To carry out this process, the Tax Agency requests from the affected digital platforms -Wallapop, Vinted, Airbnb...- a series of very specific data depending on whether it is a natural person or an entity. These, in turn, are required of the user. In some cases they are already given when registering. See:
This new regulation does not intend to expand on the obligations that already exist regarding the declaration of financial activities of this nature, especially in the income tax return. It should be remembered that sales on this type of platform are only included in the declaration if a profit has been obtained (it is sold for a higher price than the price at which it was purchased), which does not usually happen in second-hand sales.
“What has changed is that from now on the Spanish Treasury will have first-hand information to check whether these users declare or declare correctly and, if not, it will be able to regularize and sanction them,” says Anglès.
In this way, you will be able to more easily detect if a person evades paying taxes or carries out undeclared economic activity on the platforms.
The regulations also include a catalog of sanctions for those users who create difficulties when making their personal and tax data available to the platforms, or directly related to companies that do not collaborate.
As Anglès explains, "a sanctioning regime has been established for those who do not comply, with fines of 200 euros for each user who does not declare, as well as fines of 300 euros for users who refuse to declare or declare false data. Likewise, , the platforms are obliged to cancel the accounts of those users who refuse to declare.” That is, the reaction goes beyond the economic, even reaching the extreme of permanently suspending the account.
