“Suplidos” or Re-invoicing of Expenses

[Updated August 2026]

There is great confusion, especially among professionals, about how to invoice travel expenses (locomotion, accommodation, meals) when the client is willing to pay them.

So here we have two possibilities. We can consider it as a supply (“suplido”) or as a performance of the professional activity (re-invoicing the expense in the invoice that is issued to the client).

Our advice is to treat these travel expenses as part of the income from your professional activity. That means they should be subject to VAT and the corresponding withholding, just like the rest of your invoice. This isn’t just a style preference — it’s the position that Spain’s Tax Authority (DGT) has held for years, and it still holds in 2026.

What are “suplidos” and how to re-invoice expenses

The argument comes from DGT consultation V1896-03, of 13/11/2003. According to this ruling, “suplidos” are amounts that correspond to the client and that the professional pays on the client’s behalf, using funds advanced or reimbursed for that specific purpose.

For an expense to qualify as a true “suplido”, the person who legally incurs the expense has to be the client — not you. In practice, that’s almost never the case with travel expenses: you’re the one who buys the fuel, books the hotel, and pays for meals. Because you are the one generating the expense, the DGT doesn’t accept classifying it as a “suplido”. So when your client agrees to cover your travel costs, those amounts are part of your professional income — with VAT and withholding applied — not a pass-through amount outside your tax base.

A practical example on “suplidos” or re-invoicing of expenses

Let’s continue with a concrete case: an IT specialist based in Madrid is hired by a client in Toledo to reconfigure their computer network. To minimise disruption for the client, the two days of work are compressed into a tight schedule, generating additional costs for fuel, meals, and accommodation.

The costs break down as follows:

Since the client agreed to cover all of these additional costs, the invoice should include:

 A note on the 7% withholding rate for new freelancers

If you’re in your first year of activity as a professional autónomo — or in either of the two following years — you can apply a reduced 7% withholding instead of the standard 15%, as long as you didn’t carry out any professional activity in the year before you registered. This applies to your whole invoice, including any re-invoiced travel expenses, since they’re part of your professional income.

A note on Verifactu

As Spain rolls out the Verifactu invoicing system between 2026 and 2027, invoices with re-invoiced expenses need to be issued through certified, tamper-proof software just like any other invoice. There’s no special exception for suplidos or re-invoiced costs — they follow the same rules as the rest of your billing.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on how “suplidos” or re-invoicing of expenses work

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