Amazon Web Services will pay IAE directly to the Aragón municipalities where it operates data centres, rather than settling the tax centrally in Madrid. The change takes effect immediately, and AWS will make retroactive payments for each tax year from 2023 to 2026.
Pressure mounted after CEOE Aragón criticised the arrangement. The Cluster de la Energía and the municipalities hosting AWS infrastructure took the same position. They objected to the tax going to the Ministry of Finance in Madrid instead of to the Aragonese towns where the activity takes place. El Periódico de Aragón linked the dispute to the territorial impact of the infrastructure and the location of AWS’s operations.
AWS data centres have operated in El Burgo de Ebro, Villanueva de Gállego and Huesca since 2022. The first two sites are in Zaragoza province; AWS also operates in Huesca. The payments concern those municipalities, not a newly created regional tax. The company has not disclosed the total amount or provided a timetable for transferring the money.
The change is associated with the registration of Amazon Data Services Spain under epigraph 845, which covers electronic operation on behalf of third parties. El Periódico de Aragón reported that this classification allows the company to move from the national IAE system to a territorial one.
The retroactive commitment is the clearest financial element of the announcement. It covers four years of IAE payments for the municipalities where AWS runs data centres in Aragón, but the company has not disclosed the amounts involved.
A preliminary estimate put the potential annual total at about €522,777. Zaragoza accounted for €384,503 in that estimate, and Huesca for €90,817. Villanueva de Gállego was assigned €33,400, while El Burgo de Ebro was assigned €14,056. Those figures are an external estimate, not a final amount confirmed by AWS.
The dispute concerned the destination of an existing tax, not the creation of a new levy. Under the applicable rules, a company above the relevant turnover threshold can pay IAE through the national tariff and the tax authorities instead of making separate municipal payments. AWS used that option, so the tax was settled in Madrid. It will now pay at municipal level in the places directly associated with its infrastructure.
For the affected councils, the immediate issue is recovering four years of local tax payments. For AWS, the announcement marks a shift from centralised settlement to municipal payment after criticism from Aragón’s business organisations and local governments. CEOE Aragón and the Cluster de la Energía argued that the infrastructure, territorial burden and business activity were located in Aragón while the related tax revenue went to Madrid.
The change gives the municipalities a direct fiscal connection to the data centres on their territory. Without confirmed figures or evidence that the money has already been credited, the final financial scale of the retroactive payments cannot be assessed.
The decision may also matter beyond Aragón. In other Spanish regions where large data-centre operators use national tax registrations, the AWS case illustrates how the choice between national and municipal IAE treatment can affect revenue in territories hosting the infrastructure. This is an implication of the tax mechanism, not an official AWS forecast.
