Taxation in Spain
Modelo 720: reporting your Italian assets from Spain
If you live in Spain and hold an account, a flat or investments in Italy worth over 50,000 €, Modelo 720 requires you to report them to the tax office by 31 March.
August 4, 2026 · Riondato & Partners
What Modelo 720 is, and who has to file it
You moved to Spain but kept your parents' house in Vicenza, the account at your Italian bank and a few BTP government bonds you bought years ago. None of it sits in Spain, so it looks like the Spanish tax office has no say in it. It does. If you are a Spanish tax resident, Modelo 720 requires you to report those assets every year.
You count as a tax resident when you spend more than 183 days a year in Spain, or when your main economic interests are based here. From that point you pay Spanish tax on your worldwide income, and with it comes the duty to report what you hold abroad.
Modelo 720 is an informational return. Filing it costs you nothing: you simply tell the tax office what you own outside Spain. The Agencia Tributaria runs it, and you file online.
The three 50,000-euro blocks
The obligation splits into three blocks, and each one has its own 50,000 € threshold:
- Accounts at financial institutions abroad: your current account, a deposit, a savings account.
- Securities, insurance and annuities: shares, funds, holdings, bonds such as BTP, life policies with a surrender value, life annuities.
- Real estate and rights over real estate: the flat in Italy, a share of an inherited house, a usufruct.
The three blocks are measured separately. If you hold 40,000 € in an Italian account and a flat worth 120,000 €, you don't report the account (that block stays under 50,000) but you do report the property. Once a block passes the threshold, you report everything inside it, not just the part above 50,000.
One heads-up: since 2024, cryptocurrency no longer goes on the 720. It has its own form, Modelo 721, covered below.
When you file, and when you file again
The window runs from 1 January to 31 March, and it looks at your position on 31 December of the previous year. For the assets you held at the close of 2025, the deadline is 31 March 2026.
The good news: the 720 doesn't come back every single year. Once you have filed, you only report a block again if its value on 31 December has risen by more than 20,000 € since your last return, or if you stopped holding something you had already declared (you sold the flat, closed the account). If none of that happens, you skip that year.
The CJEU turn: the end of the brutal penalty regime
For years the 720 had a bad name, and deservedly so. The penalty regime was disproportionate: fixed fines of 5,000 € for each undeclared item, with a 10,000 € minimum per block, plus a 150% penalty on the value of the surfaced assets and, worst of all, no time limit at all. One slip over an old account could cost more than the balance sitting in it.
On 27 January 2022 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), in case C-788/19, struck that regime down as contrary to the free movement of capital. Spain responded with Law 5/2022 of 9 March, which removed the specific penalties and the open-ended liability.
Today the 720 follows the general regime of the Spanish General Tax Law (articles 198 and 199). Filing late, but on your own initiative and before the tax office asks, means a modest fine: 20 € per item, with a 300 € minimum, halved when you do it voluntarily. It is still worth filing correctly and on time, but it is no longer the trap it used to be.
Cryptocurrency goes a different way: Modelo 721
If you hold virtual currencies with a custodian abroad, the duty still applies, but it runs through Modelo 721. Same 50,000 € threshold, same window, 1 January to 31 March.
From 1 January 2026 the EU applies the DAC8 directive: crypto-asset providers report balances automatically to national tax authorities. In plain terms, the Spanish tax office will get that information anyway, so declaring it stops being optional in practice.
Reporting is not paying, but watch the IRPF
The 720 raises no tax on its own. The tax comes another way. As a Spanish resident you are taxed on your worldwide income, so rent from the Italian flat, interest on the account or dividends from your holdings all go into your income tax return (IRPF) in Spain.
To keep you from paying twice on the same income, there is the double taxation treaty between Spain and Italy, in force since 1977, which shares out who gets to tax each type of income and lets you credit in Spain the tax already paid in Italy. And if you pass certain wealth thresholds, those assets also count towards wealth tax (impuesto sobre el patrimonio). The 720 is only the snapshot; the taxes are worked out separately.
It runs the same way in reverse: an Italian who stays resident in Italy and holds assets in Spain reports them in Italy on the quadro RW, with IVAFE and IVIE. Each country has its own form; the logic is the same.
If you have any doubts, Riondato & Partners is here to help
For over 45 years Riondato & Partners has worked alongside families and businesses between Italy and Spain. If you hold assets in Italy and are not sure whether you need to file Modelo 720, or you want to put right a declaration from earlier years, get in touch and we will look at it with you.