This November the State Tax Administration Agency, through the Customs and Excise Department, has developed a digitalization project for the sealing of invoices for the return of Value Added Tax (hereinafter VAT) to travelers not resident in the European Union.
This new procedure called DIVA, had its first test at Barajas airport (Madrid), last August. In this sense, the implementation of the DIVA will be carried out progressively as they are incorporated into the different stores and operators "tax free" authorized by the Tax Agency.
The operation of this new program allows the traveler to speed up the process of sealing documents that are required for the refund of VAT upon leaving the territory where the tax is applied.
Specifically, it is that the stores, directly or through the “tax free” operators, send the corresponding digital invoice to the Tax Agency for the sale of “tax free” goods they make. For the return of the VAT tax quota for purchases made by travelers non-residents of a Member State of the European Union, the following notes should be taken into account:
- Firstly, You will not be able to recover the VAT quota regarding the expenses of goods or services that by their nature cannot be exported and are an occasional expense. Therefore, by way of example, any restaurant, hotel, food, etc. expenses are excluded.
- Secondly, only VAT will be refunded when the invoice amount, including taxes, is greater than 90,15 euros.
- Third and lastly, the VAT refund must be requested before leaving the country.
Thus, the traveler who wishes to leave the territory, through a port or airport, must go to the VAT seal point with the digital invoice that will be identified as DIVA and with the acquired goods, so the Department of Customs and Special Taxes will proceed to their digital sealing and, later, VAT refund.
This new project of digitalization of sealing of invoices for the return of travelers not resident in the European Union allows the Tax Administration to have access, in advance, regarding the information of sales "tax free" and, therefore, for the traveler , the waiting time at the sealing point will be shorter.
