TL;DR

  • Verifactu is the colloquial name for Spain’s new e-invoicing and anti-fraud regime for billing software, introduced by Ley 11/2021 and operationalised by Royal Decree 1007/2023.
  • It sets technical requirements for the invoicing software that autónom@s and Spanish companies use: non-modifiable records, a hashing chain that prevents quiet edits to past invoices, and an optional “verified send” mode that transmits invoices to Hacienda in real time.
  • The rollout has been phased and the deadlines have moved more than once. Confirm the current date that applies to you with your gestoría or directly on the AEAT site, not from a blog post (including this one).
  • If you hold a Spanish digital nomad visa under Ley 28/2022 and you bill clients as a self-employed person from Spain, you almost certainly need to be registered as an autónom@. The DNV special tax regime (24% IRPF on Spanish-source income up to €600,000) is a tax-residency choice that sits on top of autónom@ registration, not a substitute for it.
  • The piece you most need is between you and a gestoría who works with non-resident DNV holders. This explainer gives you the vocabulary and the shape of the system so that conversation goes faster.

What Verifactu actually is

The full legal name is the Reglamento de los sistemas informáticos de facturación. Most autónom@s and accountants just call it Verifactu, after the AEAT-branded compliance mode at its core.

It sits on top of two pieces of Spanish law:

  • Ley 11/2021, de 9 de julio, the so-called ley antifraude (anti-fraud law). This created the legal obligation for billing software used in Spain to meet specific standards of integrity, traceability and security, so that invoices cannot be quietly edited or deleted after the fact.
  • Real Decreto 1007/2023, which actually defines those technical standards. This is the SIF Reglamento, the regulation that sets out what billing software must do, what records it must keep, and how those records must be linked together.

The point of the whole structure is to close down a specific kind of fraud: businesses keeping two sets of books, with billing software that lets the user retroactively delete sales or rewrite invoices once it becomes inconvenient to have declared them. Verifactu compliance means the software itself enforces honesty, and Hacienda can verify that it does.

It is not a single platform you log into. It is a set of technical requirements that the software you already use, or are about to choose, has to meet.

Who it applies to

Broadly, Verifactu applies to:

  • Autónom@s (self-employed individuals registered in Spain under the RETA regime) who issue invoices in the course of their economic activity.
  • Spanish companies (SLs, SAs, and similar legal entities) that issue invoices.
  • Foreign companies operating in Spain through a permanent establishment.

It does not directly apply to:

  • Individuals who are not carrying on an economic activity in Spain.
  • Businesses already required to use the Suministro Inmediato de Información (SII) system through AEAT, who report VAT in near real time. SII users are a separate track.

The grey zone, and the place that matters most to RWE readers, is the DNV holder who is billing clients from Spain. We come to that in a moment.

What the regulation requires

Stripped down to what an autónom@ actually has to care about, Verifactu requires that the invoicing software you use:

  • Generates billing records that are non-modifiable. Once an invoice is issued, the record of it is fixed. You can issue a corrective invoice, but you cannot rewrite history.
  • Maintains a chained hash linking each new invoice record to the previous one. Any tampering with an earlier record breaks the chain, which is detectable on inspection.
  • Stores records in a structured, machine-readable format.
  • Carries the right markings on the invoice itself (a QR code, identifying text, and so on) so the buyer can see that the invoice came from a Verifactu-compliant system.

There are two modes of operation:

  1. Standard compliance mode. The software keeps the non-modifiable, hashed records locally (or on the provider’s servers). Hacienda only sees them on request, audit or inspection.
  2. Verified send mode (“envío Verifactu”). The software additionally transmits each invoicing record to AEAT in real time, as it is issued. This is voluntary. Businesses that opt in benefit from a presumption that their records are correct, and reduced retention obligations.

Most autónom@s will sit in the standard mode and only move to verified send if their gestoría or software provider recommends it. Verified send is essentially the on-ramp to where the whole EU is heading under ViDA, which we come to at the end.

The rollout state as of June 2026

Verifactu has been a rolling deadline story for the last two years. Hacienda has adjusted timelines more than once, partly because software providers needed longer to adapt, and partly because the underlying ministerial order setting out the technical specification took longer to publish than originally planned.

At the time of writing, the broad shape of the rollout is:

  • Software providers had an earlier deadline to make their products SIF-compliant.
  • Spanish legal entities subject to corporate income tax (Impuesto sobre Sociedades) were brought in first.
  • Autónom@s follow on a later date.

The specific calendar dates have shifted enough times that we are deliberately not pinning them here. If you are reading this and you need to know whether you personally have to be on a Verifactu-compliant system by next Tuesday, verify with your gestoría or directly on the AEAT page for Verifactu, which is the only source whose dates do not go stale. Anyone publishing a confident “the deadline is X” date without a current AEAT link is guessing.

What is not in doubt is the direction of travel. Verifactu compliance is becoming the default for billing software in Spain. If you choose your invoicing tool today, choose one whose provider has publicly committed to Verifactu compliance, ideally with the verified send option available.

What DNV holders actually need to do

This is where the most genuine confusion sits, and where most existing English-language coverage falls down.

The Spanish digital nomad visa, created under Ley 28/2022 (the Ley de Startups), is two things bundled together:

  • A residence permit, which gives you the right to live in Spain while working remotely.
  • An optional special tax regime, often called the régimen especial para trabajadores desplazados in its DNV-adapted form, which (subject to conditions) lets you be taxed as a non-resident on a flat 24% IRPF rate for Spanish-source income up to €600,000, while excluding most foreign-source income from Spanish tax.

The thing many DNV holders do not realise: the tax regime sits on top of your normal fiscal registration, it does not replace it.

If you are billing clients from Spain as a self-employed person, in almost every realistic scenario you also need to be registered as an autónom@ in Spain. That means signing up to the RETA contribution regime, declaring under the activity codes that fit your work, and issuing your invoices through Spanish-compliant channels.

This is the autónom@ leg. The DNV special tax regime is the IRPF leg. They are two different things and the practical implication is straightforward: as an autónom@ registered in Spain who issues invoices, you fall inside the Verifactu obligation in the same way any other autónom@ does.

There are edge cases. If your remote work for a single foreign employer is structured as a salaried employment relationship and you are not invoicing as a self-employed business, the autónom@ question goes away and the Verifactu question goes with it. Equally, some platform-mediated arrangements may handle invoicing on your behalf in ways that change the picture. Both of these are conversations to have with a gestoría who knows DNV cases. They are not the standard pattern.

Bottom line for the typical RWE reader on a Spanish DNV: assume Verifactu applies to you, choose a Verifactu-ready billing tool, and confirm the specifics with someone who can look at your actual paperwork.

What you should not do

A few traps that recur enough to call out.

  • Do not assume your DNV exempts you from Spanish invoicing obligations. The visa controls your right to live in Spain and gives you a tax rate option. It does not put you outside the Spanish fiscal infrastructure when you bill from here.
  • Do not conflate the DNV special tax regime with non-residence in the everyday sense. You are tax-resident in Spain for the purposes of holding the visa. The “non-resident” framing under Ley 28/2022 is a specific technical choice about how Spanish tax applies to your income, not a statement that Spanish rules generally do not apply to you.
  • Do not pick invoicing software because someone in a Facebook group said it works. Pick it because the provider has a published statement on Verifactu compliance and a track record of keeping up with Spanish regulatory change. The market includes Xolo, Holded, FacturaScripts, Quipu, Contasimple, and Sage among the better-known names. We say more about Xolo specifically, and why we recommend it, in the next section.
  • Do not rely on AI assistants to tell you the current Verifactu deadlines. They are not reliably current on this, and the deadlines have moved repeatedly.

Where to get help

The two pieces of infrastructure that matter for an autónom@ or DNV holder in Spain are:

  • A gestoría, the Spanish hybrid of accountant, fiscal adviser and admin agent. For DNV holders, you specifically want one with experience handling non-resident-regime cases under Ley 28/2022. Many small Spanish gestorías have not yet seen many of these and will quietly default to standard autónom@ paperwork that does not preserve your DNV tax position.
  • A Verifactu-compliant invoicing platform. Several gestoría platforms bundle invoicing and gestoría services together, which is often the cleanest setup for a foreign autónom@ who does not speak full Spanish and does not want to manage two relationships. The one we recommend on RWE is Xolo: English-first throughout, autónom@ registration, monthly bookkeeping, IVA filings, and renta in one place, and a team familiar with DNV cases. Maya, who edits RWE, is Xolo’s Spain ambassador and uses Xolo for her own accounts and returns. More on our partnership, including the RWE community onboarding discount, is at remoteworkeurope.eu/partners/xolo.

The AEAT site itself (sede.agenciatributaria.gob.es) has explanatory pages on Verifactu in Spanish. If your Spanish is up to it, that is the only fully authoritative source.

What comes next: ViDA

Verifactu is not just a Spanish project, although it is a notably advanced one. It is Spain’s piece of a larger EU initiative, VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA), which is moving the whole bloc towards structured, real-time e-invoicing for cross-border B2B transactions.

The ViDA package was politically agreed at EU level in 2024 and the implementation timelines are being phased in through the second half of the decade. Spain, alongside Italy and Portugal, is comparatively far ahead on the domestic side of this, which is why Verifactu is landing now rather than later. Expect further clarifications from AEAT, possibly transitional reliefs, and certainly more guidance specifically for foreign-resident autónom@s as the system beds in and the ViDA cross-border layer comes into view.

For autónom@s and DNV holders in Spain, the practical takeaway has not changed in two years: get on a compliant platform, work with a gestoría who knows DNV cases, and verify dates against AEAT before you act on any specific deadline you see online. Including in this guide.