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I asked the director of the branch of the Bank I work with and she said that some banks may have internal rules to preventively freeze the account till all the documents required are completed.
As a lawyer I think that once you prove that you have aplied for documentation to be produced you need to have direct access to the account... as a matter of fundamental right to personal freedom.
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Maria L. de Castro, JD, MA
Lawyer
Director www.costaluzlawyers.es
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Hi they recived mail from there lawers to say there bank was going to be frozen on 15 sept if they did not fill this form in, some banks dont no about this so we are getting mixed messages and people think its about there nie number as none residents bye irene This message was last edited by irenemontague on 8/14/2008.
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Irene - did you ask them the three questions I posted earlier?
Until you post the answers then I don't think anyone on here can help further.
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I think that various threads move so fast some have trouble keeping up. Irene, it's all in thread, scroll back.
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Hi all and thanks to more i have told them all at don juan to come on this forum and read all your post but if you miss a day on this forum it takes all day to catch up with whats going thanks again bye irene
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Irene, I know about missing stuff. I was away most of yesterday enjoying myself (not  ) at the dental hospital then out to have a drink in the sunshine on seafront. Consolation is if More's away, less to wade through. 
Anyway, I'm off out again, for lunch on seafront, so catch you later. 
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BBQ on the pier, maybe? 
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"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please"
Mark Twain
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I'm warning you Roberto. 
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I've just received this email
my friend bought in the costa del sol two years ago asked me loads of questions all the way from start until now.
rang today his bank account had been frozen?
get this nothing to do with tax but money laundering you have to go to the guardia they look at you, look at your passport give you a stamped certificate saying its you. back to the bank and they un freeze account .
heard anything?
Sent a nice long email off explaining what's been said on here so far.
I've also asked for extra information, how long he's held account, has his Bank been submitting non residence declarations on his behalf.
Will post when I receive a reply
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My passport photo has me with brown hair ! It was brown before using forums.  I look different too. In fact it could be any female but More. 
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I'm ready to KILL !!! 
After all my emails to & from Banco Halifax in Guardamar, when we've all agreed we didn't sign our declarations until 29th September, 2006 & the a/c wasn't opened till a while afterwards as it took a few days to process & Madrid head office had to receive the forms via Halifax European Banking Dept here in the UK, we've both had letter from Madrid today.
The letter was common to us both & says
" Dear Customer
In accordance with Spanish Law 41/1998 Non Resident Taxpayer's Income Tax and ancilliary Fiscal Regulations, there is a requirement for Banco Halifax Hispania to obtain a Declaration of Residence for Tax Purposes from all the non resident customers. This declaration is valid only for two years.
As this term has now passed since you opened your account with Banco Halifax we would like to request you to complete & sign the Declaration of Residence Form included & return it to us using the enclosed pre-paid envelope. Please note the address stated on the form must be the address of your residence in the country where you are liable to pay your taxes. In the case this address is different from the one originally stated on your application form, please provide proof of new address by means of a certified copy of a recent utility bill or of your driving licence or bank statement.
Additionally, if you have renewed your passport since signing your previous declaration, your new passport number may have changed. In this event, please provide a certified copy of your new passport to complete our records.
Please be aware that in accordance with the current legislation the declaration must be returned within the next two months following this notification, otherwise Banco Halifax Hispania will be obliged to apply a 18% withholding tax on the interest paid in your account. Therefore, to avoid any inconvenience, please return the forms as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely,
Dpto. de Extranjero
Banco Halifax Hispania "
Needless to say we shall be filling these new forms in & taking them with us to Spain in 10 days & asking our branch to copy both forms & give us a receipt for taking them off us for forwarding to Madrid themselves. With our luck both forms will be involved in theft, fire at Post Office somewhere between here & Madrid, you name it if we send them.
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Slightly off topic, but in the same vein.................
We bank with Santander and have done since 2000 when we first opened a non-resident account.
In 2004, we moved here permanently, informed the Bank of all the details including giving them a copy of our Residencia application to change our account status to Resident, which they duly did.
A few months afterwards, our accounts were all "blocked" as they call it without any warning !!! Why? Because, in the Bank's considered opinion we had had plenty of time to produce a Residencia and we hadn't done so !!!! Our reason being that we still hadn't got our Residencia !! (It actually took 13 months to get it !!)
This went on for several weeks and reached the stage where we truly didn't have a cent!! I'm not kidding !! You see, they'd blocked all our accounts, not just current but savings as well !! Our next door neighbour lent us 100 euros !!! It was seriously that bad !!!
Anyway.................hub totally lost it and went in and raised hell at the bank.............no effect whatsoever !!! So, I did the exact opposite...........went in an hour later, saw a different person and forced myself to cry !!!!! told him I was starving and had no money for food..................2 minutes later I am signing a withdrawal slip for 500 euros from our account and leave with cash in handbag !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hub's comments are not printable on here !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eventually, we managed to obtain a temporary paper stating what our Residencia numbers would be, took this to the Bank, that satisfied them and they unblocked the accounts !!!!
But it didn't end there..........oh no !!!............................the holding bank, for our pensions in transit from the UK, was Banco Popular in Madrid and it was they who had been returning our pensions to the UK cos Santander told them the accounts were blocked !!!!! Santander eventually told Popular to unblock two of our three pensions and they came back in quite quickly, but hub's pension never did get unblocked and his pension provider got so fed up they insisted on him opening a new account for it to be paid in to.So we opened another account just for hub's pension and eventually, after nine months he got all his pension back !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The moral of this story folks is .........................if you have a non-resident account and want to change it to a resident account....................don't tell the bank anything, don't even go near the bank ...................................until you have the official Residencia paperwork in your hot little hand and then it will be simple and you won't have to go through what we went through !!!!!!This message was last edited by On a mission ! on 8/22/2008.
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Hi all regarding nonresident bank a/c go on this site my friend has set this web site up for us at don juan carvajal costa del sol. WWW.carvajal-spain.com and there is a lot of information on it all in one place bye irene
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When I banked with Solbank the only time I use my debit card was to change the pin number. So when I changed over to Halifax I declined the debit card, when and if we ever decide to move over there for longer periods then I might consider getting one.
For cash and credit card purchases I use my Nationwide accounts.
I changed from Solbank because there quarterly charges suddenly rose to nearly 20e a quarter, when I went in to close the account I found out that everyone had been sent a letter offering them a new fangled account with credit cards etc. As as non-resident all I wanted was an account for my direct debits etc to be paid.
This Halifax does and as long as I keep average 600e in there no quarterly charges. It's saved me nearly 80e, more if you add the charge for non-resident declaration.
It was very easy to change over I just took in the usual passport, nie and all my utility bills. They copied these, only thing I was concerned about was Telemicro all I had was my original contract with Cine when it went digital. I was told no problem (normal phrase in Spain) and it wasn't.
Irene - I've had a look at the thread you quoted and I can't see where it talks about Non-resident bank accounts. All I could find was a reference to Residencia and British consul in Madrid.
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We bank with Cambank and we both had debit cards handed to us (we didn't request them) when we completed on our property last year. The young lady that we dealt with explained that they were both debit AND credit cards!!! As we have a regular monthly payment into our account from my state pension we do use the debit card to pay for goods and to get money at ATM's. We have had some problems with explaining that we require the goods to be charged to our debit account but on the 2 times they were charged to the credit card we were able to transfer the payment on line so it didn't turn out to be a problem. We intend to visit Spain about 3-4 times a year staying between about 3 weeks and 2 months so we thought that a regular payment into our account was best. The Government rate is quite good and is higher than the tourist rate. We also use a Nationwide credit card.
I can't see that a debit card is much use if you have to load the bank account first and the Spanish banks do charge for them. In our circumstances it works but I'm sure it's not for everyone.
Hope this helps
Gloria and Mike
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When I was with Solbank I opened my account 15 October, I always go over 1st two weeks in October and when ever I paid money into the account then I would be told if the Declaration was waiting there to be signed.
So I think it might be standard practice for it to be issued early, I don't ever recall receiving a letter telling me to come in and sign it. Just notification that the fees were going up each year
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