Modelo 172, 173 and the new modelo 175 — Spain’s crypto-asset information returns after DAC8

Spain has had crypto-asset information returns since 2023 — and it is about to replace all of them. Modelo 172 reports balances, modelo 173 reports operations, modelo 721 reports holdings abroad. A draft ministerial order put to public consultation on 10 March 2026 repeals the orders behind them with effect for financial year 2026, replaces modelo 173 with a new modelo 175, creates a modelo 042 registration return, and pulls electronic money into modelo 289. What each return demands today, what changes from 2027, and where the transition year breaks a build.

1. Where the three returns come from

The obligations were created by Ley 11/2021, de 9 de julio, on measures to prevent and fight tax fraud, and sat unusable for two years for want of an implementing regulation. That regulation is Real Decreto 249/2023, de 4 de abril, which inserted three articles into the Reglamento General de las actuaciones y los procedimientos de gestión e inspección tributaria (Real Decreto 1065/2007, the “RGAT”):

• Article 39 bis — duty to report balances in virtual currencies (modelo 172)
• Article 39 ter — duty to report operations with virtual currencies (modelo 173)
• Article 42 quater — duty to report virtual currencies situated abroad (modelo 721)

The statutory hooks are paragraph 6 of the thirteenth additional provision of Ley 35/2006 (personal income tax) for the balances return, and letter d) of the eighteenth additional provision of Ley 58/2003 (the Ley General Tributaria) for the foreign-holdings return. Two ministerial orders of 26 July 2023 approved the forms: Orden HFP/887/2023 for modelos 172 and 173 and Orden HFP/886/2023 for modelo 721. The first filings landed in January 2024 for financial year 2023 — for modelo 173, covering operations from 25 April 2023 onward, the date Real Decreto 249/2023 took effect.

Note what the returns are anchored to: the definitions of virtual currency and fiat currency in article 1, paragraphs 5 and 6, of Ley 10/2010, the Spanish anti-money-laundering law. The tax obligation borrowed its perimeter from the AML statute, not from Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA) — one reason the whole set now has to be recast.

2. Who is actually caught

Article 39 bis(1) reaches persons and entities resident in Spain, and permanent establishments in Spanish territory of persons or entities resident abroad, that provide services to safeguard private cryptographic keys on behalf of third parties in order to maintain, store and transfer virtual currencies — and it applies expressly whether that service is provided as a principal activity or in connection with another activity. That clause is the one payments firms miss: a custody wallet bolted onto an account product is inside the perimeter even though custody is not the business.

Article 39 ter(1) is wider on activity. It catches exchange between virtual currencies and fiat or between different virtual currencies, intermediation in any form in such operations, and the same safeguarding service — excluding only those whose activity is limited to advising, to putting interested parties in contact, or to the simple handling of fiat collection and payment orders for exchange or custody providers or their clients. Article 39 ter(3) adds initial offerings of new virtual currencies: where an offering is intermediated by an obliged party under paragraph 1, that intermediary files, whatever the residence of the issuer, and must identify it.

3. What each return contains, and how it is valued

The identification block is the same everywhere — full name or company name, address and Spanish tax identification number. The differences are in the object and the timing:

Valuation is prescribed rather than left to accounting policy. For balances, the filer takes the 31 December quotation offered by the principal trading platforms or price-tracking sites, or failing that a reasonable estimate of market value — and must state the quotation or value used. The AEAT’s own published answers on modelo 172 fix the reference point at 23:59 on 31 December, peninsular time. For operations the same rule applies at the date and time of the operation, and only where the consideration is not wholly in fiat. Article 39 bis(3) adds a trap for churn: if custody ended before 31 December, the information reported is that at the date custody ended, not a zero balance.

Modelo 721 carries the only threshold in the set. Under article 42 quater(5)(d) there is no duty to report where the 31 December balances, valued in euros, do not jointly exceed EUR 50,000; once exceeded, every crypto-asset must be reported. Later years are required only where the joint balance has increased by more than EUR 20,000 against the balance that triggered the last return. Entities under article 9.1 of Ley 27/2014, and holdings individually recorded in the accounts of Spanish legal persons, permanent establishments or of individuals keeping books under the Código de Comercio, are excluded.

4. Worked example — the custody wallet nobody registered

Facts: a payment institution established in Spain adds a custody feature to its app. It never executes an exchange: order flow goes to a third-party venue, and the firm holds only the keys and the euro balances funding purchases. Its tax team concludes that, not being an exchange, it owes nothing.

Applicable rule: article 39 bis(1) applies to safeguarding provided “in connection with another activity”, so the firm is a modelo 172 filer from the first year it holds keys. Article 39 bis(2) also requires the fiat balances held on behalf of third parties to be reported, with the same identification data — a field the crypto team does not own. Whether it escapes article 39 ter(1) depends on its role being genuinely limited to the excluded activities; if it presents itself as arranging the transaction, the exclusion does not hold.

What the analyst does: builds the 31 December extract from the custody ledger keyed on every person who appeared as holder, authorised person or beneficiary during the year — not the year-end customer list — joins the fiat balance from the payments ledger, and records the quotation source and timestamp per asset as a retained field, because the return requires it to be stated.

Outcome: the return is filed, with a defensible valuation trail. Had it filed nothing, the exposure is not a valuation dispute but a wholly unfiled information return.

5. The 10 March 2026 draft order — what changes

The Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria submitted a draft order to public consultation on 10 March 2026, accompanied by an abbreviated regulatory impact memorandum dated 3 March 2026. It runs to nineteen articles, one repealing provision and three final provisions, and it does four things:

• Creates modelo 042 — a census return for registration, modification and deregistration in a new Registro de operadores de criptoactivos. Article 2 confines it to crypto-asset operators that are reporting crypto-asset service providers meeting the conditions of a new article 9 quater(1) RGAT; the memorandum states the register exists for operators falling outside MiCA’s scope. Registration is due before the end of the filing period for the first modelo 175 owed; changes and deregistration within one month.
• Recasts modelo 172 as “saldos en criptoactivos” — same article 39 bis population and January deadline, but scoped to reportable crypto-assets rather than to virtual currencies as defined in the AML law.
• Replaces modelo 173 with modelo 175, the reporting-and-due-diligence return of “proveedores de servicios de criptoactivos obligados a comunicar información”, filed in January, whose obliged population comes from the pending royal decree rather than the RGAT.
• Recasts modelo 721 for crypto-assets abroad, keeping the 1 January to 31 March window, and amends annex III of Orden HAP/1695/2016, which governs modelo 289, the annual return of financial accounts in the field of mutual assistance.

All of it implements Directive (EU) 2023/2226 of 17 October 2023 (DAC8), which extends automatic exchange of information to crypto-assets, sets due-diligence and registration rules for certain providers, and carries the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework into Union law. DAC8 also widens the financial-account rules introduced by Directive 2014/107/EU to bring electronic money and central bank digital currencies into objective scope, with new account and account-holder details — which is why modelo 289 is in the same order. The transposition itself runs through a law amending the Ley General Tributaria, Ley 35/2006 and Ley 29/1987, plus a royal decree developing the due-diligence and reporting rules and amending the RGAT, Real Decreto 1021/2015 and the collection regulation; in the consultation text both still appear as “Ley XX/XX” and “Real Decreto XX/XX”. The order’s own basis is article 93(1) and (2) of the Ley General Tributaria and articles 30.2 and 117.1 RGAT.

6. Worked example — the transition year

Facts: a crypto-asset service provider authorised in Spain reads the draft order in spring 2026 and asks its reporting team to “move to modelo 175”. The team plans a single migration and decommissions the modelo 173 pipeline.

Applicable rule: the final provision sets entry into force on the day after publication, but first application to modelos 172, 175, 289 and 721 corresponding to financial year 2026, to be filed from 2027. The repeal bites for FY2026 declarations onward. FY2025 stays on the old orders.

What the analyst does: keeps both pipelines alive across one cycle — old modelo 172 and 173 for FY2025 filed in January 2026, then new modelo 172 plus modelo 175 for FY2026 filed in January 2027, with modelo 042 registration submitted before that first modelo 175 deadline rather than run as a separate project. Because article 12 of the draft order limits the content for users with no reportable operations to two data blocks, and reduces the return to the provider’s own data where due diligence finds no reportable users or persons at all, the pipeline needs a genuine nil-return path — not an empty file.

Outcome: one build, two schemas, no gap. The failure mode is not a late filing; it is decommissioning a pipeline whose last obligation has not been discharged.

7. Worked example — the e-money return nobody expected

Facts: an electronic money institution with a Spanish establishment and a substantial non-resident customer base treats DAC8 as a crypto file and assigns it to the crypto product owner. It holds no crypto-assets at all.

Applicable rule: the same order amends annex III of Orden HAP/1695/2016 for modelo 289, because DAC8 brings electronic money and central bank digital currencies into the objective scope of the financial-account reporting obligations and adds new account and holder details. First application is FY2026, filed from 2027.

What the analyst does: re-runs the reportable-account population against the amended objective scope rather than the pre-DAC8 definition, checks which e-money accounts previously treated as out of scope now qualify, and confirms the self-certification and tax-residence data for those accounts exists in onboarding records — historic accounts are the gap, not new ones. See CRS for EMIs for the classification test.

Outcome: the crypto-free EMI turns out to have the largest data-remediation job in the order — with one reporting cycle to do it in.

8. What to do, today

• Test the safeguarding clause, not the business description. If any product holds private keys for customers, article 39 bis catches it.
• Extract on an any-time-in-the-year basis. Holders, authorised persons and beneficiaries at any point during the year — a year-end snapshot under-reports by design.
• Store the valuation source. The quotation or value used must be stated in the return; capture the source and timestamp at the point of valuation rather than reconstructing it in January.
• Do not decommission the old pipeline. FY2025 files on the old modelos 172 and 173 regardless of when the new order is published.
• Sequence modelo 042 before the first modelo 175. Registration is timed off that filing deadline, so it is a dependency of the return, not a parallel task.
• Route the modelo 289 change to the CRS owner. The e-money and CBDC extension has nothing to do with the crypto stack.
• Read the consultation text before building. The annexes carry the field-level layouts, and article numbering in the pending law and royal decree is still unresolved.

9. Frequently asked questions

Related: DAC8 crypto-asset reporting in the EU · CASP authorisation in Spain under MiCA · CESOP reporting in Spain — modelo 379