Modelo 720 in 2026: declaring foreign assets as a Spanish tax resident after the CJEU reform

An informative declaration, not a tax: Modelo 720 tells the Agencia Tributaria what you hold abroad. If you are a Spanish tax resident with foreign accounts, securities or property worth more than EUR 50,000 in any one category, you must file it by 31 March each year. The old confiscatory penalties died in 2022, but the obligation itself is very much alive.

What is Modelo 720 and who must file it?

Modelo 720 is an annual informative tax return that Spanish tax residents file with the Agencia Tributaria to report assets and rights held outside Spain. It was introduced by Law 7/2012 as an anti-fraud measure, and the legal basis now sits in the Disposicion Adicional Decimoctava of the Ley General Tributaria (Law 58/2003). It is an information declaration, not a tax assessment: filing it does not itself trigger a tax charge, but failing to file is a tax offence.

Anyone considered a Spanish tax resident must file, including natural persons and legal entities resident in Spanish territory. The obligation extends beyond outright owners to authorised signatories, beneficiaries, usufructuaries and anyone with effective control of the asset. If you have moved to Spain under the Beckham Law special regime, check your status carefully: Beckham regime holders are taxed as non-residents on foreign income and are generally exempt from Modelo 720 during the regime period, but confirm this with a tax advisor. The residency test itself, including the 183-day rule and the centre-of-economic-activities test, is set out in our guide to Spanish tax residency.

What are the three asset blocks and the EUR 50,000 threshold?

Modelo 720 splits reportable assets into three independent blocks, each regulated by its own article of the Reglamento General de las Actuaciones y los Procedimientos de Gestion e Inspeccion Tributaria (RGAT, approved by Royal Decree 1065/2007). Each block has its own EUR 50,000 threshold, applied to the combined value of all assets in that block. If a block’s total stays below EUR 50,000, you do not report it at all. If it exceeds EUR 50,000, you must report every asset within that block, not just the portion above the threshold.

Block	RGAT article	What it covers	Threshold trigger
Block I: Accounts	Art. 42 bis	Current, savings and investment accounts at foreign financial institutions	Balance at 31 December exceeds EUR 50,000 OR average Q4 balance exceeds EUR 50,000
Block II: Securities and insurance	Art. 42 ter	Shares, investment fund participations, life insurance and annuities held abroad	Fair market value at 31 December exceeds EUR 50,000
Block III: Real estate	Art. 54 bis	Property and real estate rights (ownership, usufruct, use rights) located abroad	Acquisition cost exceeds EUR 50,000

A practical detail on Block III: the threshold uses acquisition cost, not current market value. A property bought for EUR 60,000 in 2010 that is now worth EUR 45,000 still triggers the filing obligation. For Block I, either the 31 December balance or the average Q4 balance crossing EUR 50,000 triggers reporting. The Agencia Tributaria’s official FAQs confirm that the three blocks are separate obligations filed on the same form, and that each block’s sanction is applied independently from the others.

When is the Modelo 720 deadline in 2026?

The filing window runs from 1 January to 31 March 2026, covering assets held as of 31 December 2025. The Agencia Tributaria’s submission periods page states that where technical reasons prevent online filing within the regulatory period, filing is permitted within the four calendar days following the deadline. Filing is electronic only, via the AEAT sede, and there is no paper option.

Do I need to file every year?

No. Once you have filed Modelo 720 for a given block, you only re-file that block when one of two things happens: the block’s value increases by more than EUR 20,000 compared with the last filed return, or a previously declared asset is sold, transferred or cancelled. The EUR 20,000 increment is measured per block, not per individual asset, and the comparison is against the last year you actually filed, not necessarily the immediately preceding year. The Agencia Tributaria’s filing frequency guidance illustrates this with a worked example: a taxpayer whose Q4 average balance rose EUR 15,000 one year and EUR 18,000 the next would not re-file until the cumulative increase against the last filed year crossed EUR 20,000.

What happened to the old penalties?

The original Modelo 720 penalty regime, introduced by Law 7/2012, was among the most severe in European tax law. Non-compliance triggered three consequences: undeclared assets were presumed to be unexplained wealth gains taxed in the oldest open period; there was no statute of limitations, so AEAT could pursue assets acquired decades earlier; and a 150 per cent penalty was applied to the value of the undeclared assets, on top of fixed fines of EUR 5,000 per data item (minimum EUR 10,000). A taxpayer with EUR 500,000 of undeclared foreign assets could face penalties exceeding EUR 750,000, more than the assets themselves.

On 27 January 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Case C-788/19, Commission v. Kingdom of Spain that this regime violated Article 63 TFEU on the free movement of capital. The Court identified three specific failures: the irrebuttable presumption of unexplained gain, the disproportionate 150 per cent sanction, and fixed fines out of all proportion to penalties for equivalent domestic reporting failures with no total cap. Crucially, the Court did not strike down the reporting obligation itself, only the penalty regime.

Spain responded with Law 5/2022 of 9 March, which abolished the special Modelo 720 sanctioning regime and aligned penalties with the general framework of the Ley General Tributaria. The unlimited statute of limitations was replaced by the standard four-year prescription period. The Agencia Tributaria’s sanctions FAQ page confirms the reform applies independently to each of the three reporting blocks, each treated as a separate information obligation under its own RGAT article.

What penalties apply now under the reformed regime?

Since Law 5/2022, failures on Modelo 720 are sanctioned under the ordinary provisions of the Ley General Tributaria (Law 58/2003), specifically Article 198 on late or missing information declarations. The BOE consolidated text sets out the current figures:

Non-compliance	Current sanction under LGT Art. 198
Late filing without prior AEAT request	EUR 20 per data item, minimum EUR 300, maximum EUR 20,000
Voluntary late filing before AEAT request	Sanction and limits halved (EUR 10 per data item, minimum EUR 150, maximum EUR 10,000)
Filing after an AEAT request	Higher penalties under Art. 198.3, calibrated to turnover
Incomplete, inaccurate or false data (monetary)	Proportional fine up to 2 per cent of undeclared amounts, minimum EUR 500
Incomplete, inaccurate or false data (non-monetary)	EUR 200 per data item

The key point: these are ordinary informative-declaration penalties, the same ones that apply to domestic filings such as Modelo 347 or Modelo 190. The confiscatory 150 per cent regime is gone. The Agencia Tributaria applies each block’s sanction independently, so a taxpayer who files Block I late but omits Block III entirely faces two separate sanction calculations.

A worked example: a relocating buyer with UK assets

Consider a British buyer who becomes a Spanish tax resident in 2025 after purchasing a property on the Costa del Sol. At 31 December 2025 they hold: a UK current account with EUR 32,000, a UK savings account with EUR 28,000, a UK stocks and shares ISA valued at EUR 70,000, and a UK buy-to-let property acquired for EUR 180,000. Their filing position for the 2025 fiscal year (deadline 31 March 2026) would be:

Block	Total value	Above EUR 50,000?	File?
Block I: Accounts	EUR 60,000 (32,000 + 28,000)	Yes	Yes, report both accounts
Block II: Securities	EUR 70,000	Yes	Yes, report the ISA
Block III: Real estate	EUR 180,000 acquisition cost	Yes	Yes, report the buy-to-let

All three blocks exceed the threshold, so this taxpayer files all three on a single Modelo 720. Next year, they only re-file a block if it rises by more than EUR 20,000 against the 2025 figure or if an asset is sold. If they later sell the buy-to-let and the proceeds move the accounts block up by EUR 25,000, they re-file Block I and Block III (to report the cancellation). This is the kind of cross-border position that a Spanish tax advisor (asesor fiscal) should review before the 31 March deadline, especially if you are also navigating the US-Spain tax position or the post-Brexit 90/180 rule as part of your relocation. The Andalusia wealth tax and its bonification regime, which interacts with the asset values declared on Modelo 720, is covered in our guide to wealth tax for non-residents.

A worked example: a non-resident becoming resident mid-year

A different scenario clarifies the timing trap. A German executive moves to Marbella on 1 September 2025, having previously been non-resident in Spain. Under the 183-day rule she does not become a Spanish tax resident in 2025 (she spends only 122 days in Spain that year), so she has no Modelo 720 obligation for the 2025 fiscal year. She becomes resident in 2026 once she crosses 183 days. Her first Modelo 720 filing covers assets held at 31 December 2026, with a deadline of 31 March 2027. If she holds a German brokerage account worth EUR 120,000 and a Munich apartment acquired for EUR 250,000, she files Block II and Block III for the 2026 fiscal year. She does not need to back-file for 2025, because she was not a Spanish tax resident at 31 December 2025. The exit tax applies to the opposite transition (leaving Spain), not to arriving. The timing of the residency shift is the single most important determinant of the first filing year, and it is a common source of confusion for relocators who assume the filing clock starts on their arrival date rather than on the 31 December valuation date of the year they first qualify as resident.

How does Modelo 720 compare to the UK, US and German equivalents?

Spain is not alone in requiring residents to report foreign assets. The UK, the US and Germany each operate a foreign-asset or foreign-income reporting regime, but they differ materially in structure, threshold and penalty. A relocating buyer who has filed one of these abroad should not assume the Spanish regime works the same way.

Country	Form or mechanism	What it reports	Threshold	Filing deadline	Key penalty
Spain	Modelo 720 (standalone informative return)	Foreign assets in three blocks (accounts, securities, real estate)	EUR 50,000 per block	31 March (Q1)	EUR 20 per data item, min EUR 300, max EUR 20,000
US	FATCA Form 8938 (attached to Form 1040)	Specified foreign financial assets	USD 50,000 (single, US resident) to USD 600,000 (joint, abroad)	15 April (with tax return)	USD 10,000 failure to file, USD 50,000 continued, 40 per cent understatement
US	FBAR FinCEN Form 114 (separate, Treasury)	Foreign bank accounts	USD 10,000 aggregate	15 April (auto-extended to 15 October)	Civil penalties, willful ceiling adjusted annually for inflation
UK	SA106 Foreign pages (supplementary to SA100 Self Assessment)	Foreign income and gains, not a standalone asset declaration	No fixed asset threshold; triggered by income/gains	31 January following tax year	HMRC penalty regime, up to 200 per cent of tax due for offshore non-compliance
Germany	Anlage KAP and Anlage AUS (attachments to Einkommensteuererklärung)	Foreign capital income and foreign income sources	No standalone asset threshold; income-driven	31 July following tax year	Steuerhinterziehung (tax evasion), up to 5 years imprisonment or fine

The structural difference matters. Modelo 720 is an asset declaration filed independently of the income tax return: it reports what you hold, not what you earned. The US FATCA Form 8938 attaches to the income tax return but captures assets, while the FBAR is a separate Treasury filing focused on bank accounts. The UK SA106 and the German Anlage KAP and Anlage AUS are income-focused: they report foreign income and gains as part of the annual income tax return, not a standalone asset inventory. A UK resident moving to Spain may have never filed an asset declaration before, because the UK system taxes income rather than requiring a balance-sheet-style foreign asset report. The EUR 50,000 Modelo 720 threshold is a new concept for them.

The UK further diverged from 6 April 2025, when the remittance basis of taxation was abolished and replaced by the Foreign Income and Gains (FIG) regime. Qualifying new residents can claim relief on foreign income and gains for their first four years of UK residence, after which all worldwide income is taxed on the arising basis. Spain has no equivalent four-year relief window: once you are a Spanish tax resident, your worldwide income is taxed under IRPF from day one, and Modelo 720 applies from the first 31 December you qualify as resident. Our guide to resident IRPF for property owners covers the income side of that transition.

The US system is the most demanding for its citizens, because US tax filing obligations follow citizenship, not just residence. A US citizen who becomes a Spanish tax resident must file both the US FATCA/FBAR regime and the Spanish Modelo 720, reporting the same foreign accounts to two different authorities. The FATCA Form 8938 threshold for a single filer living in the US is USD 50,000 on the last day of the tax year or USD 75,000 at any time during the year; for a single filer living abroad it rises to USD 200,000 on the last day or USD 300,000 at any time. The FBAR has a much lower USD 10,000 aggregate threshold. A US citizen moving to Spain should expect to file both the US forms and Modelo 720, and the two regimes do not offset each other.

Does Modelo 720 apply to property I own in the UK or Ireland?

Yes, if you are a Spanish tax resident. Block III covers real estate located abroad, including full ownership, usufruct and use rights. The threshold is acquisition cost, so a holiday home in the UK bought for EUR 120,000 is reportable regardless of its current market value. This is one of the most common triggers for British residents who have relocated to Spain, and it sits alongside the annual non-resident tax obligations on any Spanish property you may also own. If you are a non-resident owner of Spanish property, see our guide to annual property taxes for non-residents for the separate IBI and Modelo 210 regime. Non-EU residents with Spanish property or income should also confirm whether they need a fiscal representative to handle their Spanish tax filings.

What about cryptocurrency and Modelo 721?

Virtual currencies are not reported on Modelo 720. The Agencia Tributaria explicitly states on the Form 720 procedure page that the information declaration on virtual currencies located abroad is not required for Modelo 720. Crypto assets held on foreign exchanges are instead declared on Modelo 721, a separate informative return introduced by Orden HFP/886/2023 of 26 July (BOE-A-2023-17429, in force 30 July 2023), for the first time applicable to the 2023 fiscal year with a deadline of 31 March 2024.

The 721 has its own EUR 50,000 threshold and the same January-to-March filing window. But a critical distinction from the AEAT’s Modelo 721 FAQ limits its scope: the obligation applies only when two conditions are met. First, the virtual currencies must be custodied by a third party that provides services to safeguard cryptographic private keys on behalf of others (a custodial exchange such as Coinbase, Kraken or Binance). Second, that custodian must not be resident in Spain or a Spanish permanent establishment. Self-custodied wallets, where the user holds their own private keys, do not trigger the 721 at all, regardless of whether the wallet is a hot wallet or a cold wallet. The Agencia Tributaria draws the line at custody, not at the type of wallet.

If you hold crypto on a Spanish-registered exchange, different reporting rules apply through Modelo 172. The 721’s scope was modified by Orden HAC/1504/2024 of 26 December (BOE-A-2024-27528), which substituted the annex to adapt the reporting fields for the 2024 fiscal year campaign.

The bottom line

Modelo 720 is a reporting obligation, not a tax, and the post-2022 penalty regime is proportionate. But the filing requirement itself is firm: if you are a Spanish tax resident with more than EUR 50,000 in any one of the three foreign-asset blocks, the 31 March deadline applies. File electronically through the AEAT sede, keep records of acquisition costs for property, and re-file only when a block moves by more than EUR 20,000 or an asset is disposed of. The old 150 per cent penalty is dead, but non-filing still carries a real fine under the ordinary LGT regime. The non-resident tax audit guide explains how AEAT cross-references Modelo 720 data with bank-account information received under the Common Reporting Standard, and the inheritance planning guide covers how declared foreign assets feed into the Spanish estate-tax position.