A sub-contractor´s tax certificate [certificado de subcontratista] is issued by the tax office.
What is it and when you may need one?
What is it?
Tax certificates can accredit, among other things, the submission of tax returns and self-assessments and the communication of data or of specific details contained in them, census status, whether tax obligations are up-to-date and the existence or absence of unpaid debts or fines that appear in the databases of the Administration of the Tax Agency.
Who may request it?
The law makes the contractor liable for any failing in meeting the legal requirements of their sub-contactors.
When a company sub-contracts a job or outsources a service needs to guarantee that its sub-contractor meets all legal requirements and obligations, among them; the proper registration of the business activity and the payment of all due tax.
The company also needs check that all social payments are up-to-date.
To that end, if you do jobs outsourced by other companies they may require from you to provide regularly certificates from tax office and social security to ensure that you are up-to-date with your tax payments.
When applying for it you may receive a ‘positive certificate’ ( when everything is up-to-date) or a ‘negative’ one.
If you have a installment plan, or a differed payment, arranged with the tax office, the situation gets a bit more complex. Theoretically, if you are up-to-date with your installments the certificate will be issued as ‘positive.’.
However there is a time every month, in between the time that the tax office issue the order of direct debit to your bank and the time the bank send the confirmation of payment back to the tax office, when your records show that you have some amounts pending and the certificate will come out ‘negative’.
If you need to provide the certificate in order to get paid, a common practice of contractors, then you need to sort out the best time to apply for it
You can apply for it using your Digital Signature in the Tax Office web site or by means of your accountant.