Why you shouldn’t leave your Spanish bank account inactive for too long….
When buying a property in Spain you will need a Spanish bank account to pay for your general running costs and mortgage payments. If the account is no longer needed, you should make sure you close it if it’s not being used regularly
Not using a bank account you have in Spain can cost you dearly in the long run, with both the country’s tax agency and your bank having the right to take all or some of your money.
Bank transactions in Spain are monitored by the watchful eye of the country’s Agencia Tributaria, also known as Hacienda, especially when it comes to payments above €3,000, transfers of more than €10,000 and deposits of €500 banknotes.
Banks in Spain are in fact legally obliged to inform Hacienda of any of these transactions, as well as credits and loans above €6,000, but tax authorities can also request permission from financial entities to investigate a specific account at any time.
Spain’s Tax Agency can take all the money from inactive bank accounts. Rather than just being able to monitor transactions, Spain’s Tax Agency can also check for account inactivity as banks provide them with this information as well. Fortunately, they only have the right to empty inactive accounts after 20 years without use.
Although this may seem to exclude the vast majority of account holders, Hacienda still managed to fill public coffers with an extra €12.57 million from these inactive accounts in 2019, 13 percent more than the previous year (€150 million over the last 10 years).
The Bank of Spain has warned account holders in the country that when cancelling an account “it isn’t enough to leave your balance at zero”, but rather that you have to contact the bank to give express written instructions to cancel the account.
Even if you want to keep the account open in case you choose to use it in the future, remember that most banks in Spain charge maintenance and other fees on a regular basis.
This means that you could be unknowingly overdrawn if you have very few funds, and a penalty fee which could mount up without your knowledge if you’re not receiving correspondence from your Spanish bank.
As a general rule, when three years have passed and a Spanish current account has not registered a single transaction, Spanish banks put these dormant accounts on a separate list, to which a different set of maintenance fees apply with respect to regular account users.
The standard practice is for them at the very least to charge the maximum maintenance fees published in the Bank of Spain: €36 euros per year.
Even though the Bank of Spain considers it bad practice for private banks to not inform the holders of inactive accounts that they are being charged, it’s still something which happens regularly.
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