The RIC explained for small companies: 90 % of profit, the three-year clock and what counts as investment

Every guide to doing business in the Canaries mentions the RIC in the same breath as the ZEC and the IGIC, and most small companies in Fuerteventura then do one of two things with it: nothing, because it sounds like a large-company instrument, or something wrong, because the rules were read once in the year the reserve was booked and never again. Both are expensive. The RIC — the Reserva para Inversiones en Canarias, article 27 of the REF law — is the single biggest tax lever a profitable island business has, and it is built for exactly the company that keeps its profit and reinvests it.

This is the numbers piece: what the reserve does to a 2026 tax bill, the two clocks that govern it, what counts as investment — including the door to long-term rental homes opened in 2025 — and what it costs to get it wrong.

What the reserve does

A company with establishments in the Canaries may reduce its corporate-tax base by the amounts it sets aside from its profit into a reserve for investment, up to 90 % of the profit of the year that it does not distribute and that comes from the island establishments. Profit that goes to the legal reserve does not count as undistributed, and the reduction can never take the base below zero.

On 2026 rates the effect is stark. Take a micro company — turnover under €1 million — with €100,000 of profit that it keeps entirely in the business. Without the RIC it pays 19 % on the first €50,000 and 21 % on the rest: €20,000. With the maximum reserve, about €87,900 once the calculation is solved for the tax itself, the taxable base falls to roughly €12,100 and the bill to about €2,300 — a saving of some €17,700, on one condition: that the €87,900 goes into qualifying investment within the deadline and stays there for the holding period. Meet both and the saving is definitive, not deferred. The reserve sits on the balance sheet under its own heading and cannot be touched while the assets it bought must remain in the company.

That is the whole logic of the RIC: the tax you would have paid becomes the assets you were going to buy anyway. A company that takes the profit out as salary or dividend cannot use it; a company that retains and invests barely pays.

The two clocks

The three-year clock, which in practice is four. The reserve is booked when the shareholders approve the accounts that apply the result — before 30 June for a company with a calendar financial year — that is, in the year after the profit, even though the reduction goes into the corporate tax return for that profit, filed by 25 July. From the accrual date of the year in which the reserve is booked, the company has three years to materialise it: 2026 profit is booked in 2027 and must be in qualifying assets, in operation, by 31 December 2030. Counting the profit year, five financial years. An asset counts from the day it enters service, and a leased asset counts too, provided the purchase option is exercised. The clock can also run backwards: an investment made this year may serve as materialisation of reserves booked against the profit of this year or the three that follow — the advance-investment rule — which is how a company that buys first and earns later still uses the RIC.

The five-year clock. Once bought, the assets must stay in operation in the company for five years at least — ten for land — without being sold, let or ceded; a broken asset can be replaced within six months by another that meets the rules. Jobs created under the reserve must be kept for five years, three for a small company. Until the holding period ends, the notes to the annual accounts must list every reserve, what it bought and when.

What counts as investment

Article 27 lists four doors, in order of preference:

• A — initial investment: new tangible or intangible assets bought to create or extend an establishment, to diversify its products or to transform its production. Land only for a closed list of uses (protected housing for rent, industry, care homes, commercial areas under rehabilitation, tourist establishments being refurbished). Intangibles may not exceed half of the investment. A small company — one under the €10 million turnover line of article 101 of the corporate-tax law in the year of the profit — may buy used assets, as long as they have never served another RIC. Never, in any form, a holiday-let property: article 27 excludes the vivienda vacacional twice, once for buying and once for refurbishing — the holiday-let piece explains why the islands treat it as a category apart.
• B — jobs linked to that investment, created within six months of its start and measured against the average headcount of the previous twelve months; and B bis, jobs not linked to an initial investment, up to half of the year's reserve.
• C — other assets: tangible or intangible assets that do not qualify as initial investment, environmental investment in the islands, and certain R&D.
• D — shares and debt: new shares in Canary companies that will make the A, B or C investments themselves, including ZEC entities — though the money cannot be used to meet the ZEC's own minimum investment — and Canary public debt that finances infrastructure.

Whatever the door, the assets must sit in the archipelago, be used there and serve the company's own economic activity; the amount materialised is the acquisition price without interest or indirect taxes, and never above market value.

The 2025 door: homes for long-term rental

Since the tax years beginning in 2025, a company may also materialise its reserve — old reserves included — in homes in the Canaries that it buys or builds to let as the tenant's habitual residence. The conditions are precise: the rental must be new — the property was not let as a home in the year before purchase; the tenant must not be a related party; the company must run the rental as an economic activity with at least one full-time employee; the home must be let within six months of purchase or of being made habitable; and the five-year holding clock starts with the effective rental — a vacancy between tenants stretches it by the same length, and a vacancy longer than six months breaks it. Larger companies may only use second-hand homes that have not carried an earlier RIC or the investment deduction. It is a real door for a Fuerteventura company with retained profit and a housing market short of long-term stock; it is not a door for tourist flats.

Self-employed too

The RIC is not only for companies. A self-employed person taxed under direct estimation, with a Canary establishment, may deduct from their income tax the amounts of net operating income set aside in the reserve, multiplied by their average tax rate, up to 80 % of the tax that corresponds to that income. A Fuerteventura professional with €50,000 of taxable income who reserves €25,000 has an average rate of about 25.7 % on the 2026 Canary scale: a deduction of about €6,400 off a bill of about €12,900. The same qualifying investments and the same five-year maintenance clock; the materialisation clock starts when the reserve is booked, which a sole trader may do on 31 December of the profit year or in the following year, so 2026 profit must be materialised by 31 December 2029 or 2030 depending on when the entry is made. And the reserve must appear in the books — which means real accounting, not the box-ticking that módulos allow.

What it costs to get it wrong

The reserve is a promise, and the law prices its breach. Fail to invest in time, invest in the wrong asset, sell before the five years or touch the reserve early, and the amounts that reduced the base go back into the taxable base — for the self-employed, into the tax bill — of the year of the breach, with late-payment interest from the original year and whatever penalty applies. Book the reserve without the required heading and the fine is 2 % of what should have been booked; leave it out of the notes to the accounts and the fine is another 2 %; put false data in those notes and it is €100 per item, €1,000 at least.

Two further limits decide the plan. The RIC is incompatible, for the same assets, with the investment deduction (the DIC, 25 % of new fixed assets under article 94 of Law 20/1991) and with the general investment credits — so each asset is assigned to one incentive, never two. And for the A, B and D.1 investments, the RIC's tax saving plus any public grant on the same project may not exceed the EU ceilings for regional aid.

One horizon to keep in view: the ZEC register closes on 31 December 2026 under the EU block-exemption regulation that also underpins the RIC's advance-investment rule and its aid ceilings. The regime has been renewed at each expiry so far, and the 2025 rental-housing reform shows it being extended, not wound down — but a reserve booked against 2026 profit will be materialised under whatever text is in force then, and we will say so when it is.

Is it for you

The RIC is worth booking when three things are true at once: the company keeps its profit rather than paying it out; it will invest at least the reserved amount, within the deadline — four years in practice for a company —, in assets it would have bought anyway; and it can live with those assets — or the rental homes — for five years. Where the investment is small relative to the profit, the DIC's 25 % credit is the cleaner tool. Where the profit is small, the 2026 corporate rates of 19 % and 21 % already do most of the work, as the autónomo-or-SL guide shows. And where a new project is starting from scratch with staff and investment, the ZEC's 4 % may be the better regime — the RIC can even help fund it through the D door.

Where we come in

Our tax desk in Caleta de Fuste and Costa Calma models the reserve on your real profit, drafts the investment plan against the three-year and five-year clocks, books the reserve and the notes correctly and files the returns — and tells you honestly when the DIC or the ZEC serves you better. See tax advisory, or book a consultation — we reply within one business day.

Common questions

How much of my profit can go into the RIC?
Up to 90 % of the year's profit from your Canary establishments that you do not distribute, excluding what goes to the legal reserve, and never so much that the taxable base turns negative. On €100,000 of retained profit a micro company can reserve about €87,900 in 2026 and pay about €2,300 of corporate tax instead of €20,000.

Can a small company buy second-hand equipment with the reserve?
Yes. A company under the €10 million turnover line in the year of the profit may materialise the reserve in used assets, provided they never served another RIC. Larger companies must buy new. Land, in any case, only for the uses the law lists.

Can I use the RIC to buy a flat and rent it out?
Since 2025, yes, for long-term rental as the tenant's habitual home: a property not let as a home in the previous year, an unrelated tenant, a full-time employee running the activity, a tenant in place within six months, and five years of rental. Never for a holiday let, which article 27 excludes outright.

What happens if I do not invest in time?
The amount that reduced your base goes back into the taxable base of the year the deadline expires, with late-payment interest counted from the original year and a possible penalty. The same applies if you sell the asset before five years or spend the reserve on something the law does not list.

Facts verified in September 2026 (Law 19/1994 on the Canary economic and fiscal regime, article 27 as in force after Law 6/2025 and its fifteenth additional provision on rental housing; Law 27/2014 on corporate tax, articles 29 and 101 and transitional provision 44 for the 2026 rates; Law 20/1991, article 94 on the investment deduction; the Supreme Court case law (judgments of 12 December 2012 and 3 March 2014) and the TEAC ruling of 8 February 2018 on how the materialisation deadline is counted; the AEAT pages on the Canary regime; Regulation (EU) 651/2014, article 59). Figures are worked examples on 2026 rates; your own will differ.