A calculator for VAT, and for IGIC and IPSI too
Two sums in one: from the base to the total and from the total to the base. With the mainland rates, with the eight Canary Islands IGIC rates and with IPSI, whose rate you enter yourself because your city sets it. It is worked out in your browser: we send nothing anywhere.
What exactly this calculator does
The two operations asked for every day in a small office, and the one people get wrong is the second:
- From the base to the total. Multiply the taxable base by the rate and add the tax. A service of €1,000 at 21% is €210 of VAT and €1,210 in total.
- From the total to the base. This is where almost everybody gets it wrong: you do not take 21% off a total that includes VAT. You divide by 1.21. €1,210 gives €1,000 of base, not €955.90.
The difference between the two sums on one lunch receipt is cents. Over a year of expenses recorded the wrong way round it is several hundred euros of VAT you have not deducted, or have deducted too much of.
Where the rates come from
The general VAT rate is 21% and it is in article 90 of Ley 37/1992. The reduced ones — 10% and 4% — are in article 91, and they do not go by sector but by very specific goods and services: ordinary bread, milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables, books and medicines for human use go at 4%; hospitality, passenger transport and home renovations that meet their three requirements, at 10%.
In the Canary Islands there is no VAT, there is IGIC, and its table of rates is longer than it is usually made out to be: a zero rate, 1%, 3% super-reduced, 5% reduced, 7% general, 9.5%, 15% and a special rate of 20%. The 5% one was added in 2024 and the 1% one in 2026 — for petroleum and its derivatives — and both are missing from almost every calculator in circulation. They are in articles 32 to 41 of Decreto Legislativo 1/2025, the consolidated text of the IGIC, which since 21 October 2025 has replaced the article 51 of Ley 4/2012 that everybody still cites.
In Ceuta and Melilla, IPSI applies, and it is not a national tax with a single table: each autonomous city approves its rates by tax by-law and revises them when it chooses. That is why you will not find a list of IPSI rates here: we would rather you typed in the one that applies to you than give you a number that may be two years out of date.
What this page cannot decide for you
What rate applies to what you sell. That is the hard part and the one no calculator settles: a bottle of wine goes at 10% served at a table in your restaurant and at 21% sold to take away, and a renovation goes at 10% only if the home is more than two years old, the client is a private individual using it as a home and the materials you supply do not exceed 40% of the base. The hospitality and construction pages cover that, with the rule alongside.
Nor does it decide whether your transaction is exempt or outside the scope, which are not the same thing even though both give zero tax: an exempt one goes on the invoice with a reference to the article that covers it and counts in the prorrata; one outside the scope is not even a VAT transaction.
The rates in force, with the rule behind them
The VAT ones apply in mainland Spain and in the Balearics. In the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla the tax is a different one; it is not “the VAT they have there”.
| Territory | Rates | Where it is written down |
|---|---|---|
| Mainland Spain and the Balearics · VAT | 21% general · 10% reduced · 4% super-reduced | Ley 37/1992, articles 90 and 91 |
| The Canary Islands · IGIC | 0% · 1% · 3% super-reduced · 5% reduced · 7% general · 9.5% · 15% · 20% special | Decreto Legislativo 1/2025, the consolidated text of the IGIC, articles 32 to 41 |
| Ceuta and Melilla · IPSI | They are set by each city's tax by-law | There is no national table: you look it up at the autonomous city |
The recargo de equivalencia goes separately and only retailers pay it: the surcharge calculator works it out.
In the program you do not work this out: it is worked out already
A calculator is good for one invoice. For a whole quarter the rate has to travel attached to each line from the moment you write it until the form comes out.
The rate, on the product record
You set it once and it comes out on its own on every invoice. One invoice can carry three different rates and the breakdown comes out right without your thinking about it.
IGIC and IPSI as standard
You say in the settings where you pay tax and the program changes the tax, the rates and the forms. It is not a workaround and it is not a separate module.
The quarter, reconciled
Output and input VAT, split by rate, ready for the 303 without going over a single invoice by hand.
Questions about working out VAT
If you spend your day doing this sum, stop doing it
In Cairos the rate is attached to the product and to the client, and the breakdown comes out on its own on the invoice, in the VAT record book and in the quarter's form.
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