What is the Spanish Foreign Investments Form (DS Form)?

The Foreign investments form (Ds Form) must be filed to the “Foreign Investment department of the Ministry of Economy” for administrative, statistical, or economic purposes.

In general, investments will be informed once they have been made, to provide the Spanish Administration with knowledge of foreign investments in Spain or Spanish investment outside for statistical and administrative purposes.

However, there will be an obligation to file a prior form in the cases of investments from/in tax havens, in which investments themselves are not declared but investment projects. This declaration will be necessary except in the cases certainly excluded.

Foreign investments are classified in two groups:

Foreign investment in Spain

The cases of filing may be the following:

  • Individuals not resident in Spain (Spanish or foreigners, domiciled abroad or who have their main residence outside of Spain).
  • Corporations domiciled abroad, as well as public entities.
  • The investment will be informed by the non-resident holder. Additionally, when the operation has been managed by a Spanish public notary, the latter will also inform it.

Depending on how and in which asset the investment is done, there will be different parties obliged to declared and the forms will be different.

Spanish investments abroad

This obligation may affect to the following holders of Spanish investments abroad:

  • Individuals residing in Spain, understood as Spanish or foreigners with domicile or main residence in Spain.
  • Corporations located in Spain.

Spanish investments abroad can be made through any of the following operations:

  • Participation in foreign companies.
  • The creation outside of Spain of branches of Spanish companies.
  • Securities of non-Spanish companies.
  • Participation in foreign investment funds.
  • The acquisition of real estate located abroad when exceeding certain values or under certain requirements.
  • Any other investments in foreign entities, corporations or similar.

There are a lot of different forms which will be used each one depending on the type of investment.

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