Moving to Spain for work raises one question very quickly: what your tax bill will look like. For many incoming web professionals, the answer depends on a single regime — the impatriate regime, better known as the Beckham Law.
The mechanism is simple: instead of being taxed as a Spanish resident on your worldwide income, you are treated as a non-resident for tax purposes on the income you earn in Spain, at a fixed rate of 24 percent on the first 600,000 euros with 47 percent applying beyond that threshold. For higher earners, the saving can be considerable.
Not everyone qualifies. As a general rule, you must have been non-resident in Spain for the previous five tax years, the move has to be tied to a job offer, a posting or a company directorship, and the activity must be performed principally on Spanish territory. Recent reforms have widened the scope to remote workers and certain entrepreneurs.
The deadline is where most applications fail. You have to apply within six months of starting the activity that triggers residence. Miss it and the regime is lost for the whole assignment. Once granted, it applies for the year of arrival and the following five.
It is not automatically the better option. Where a large part of your wealth sits abroad, the effect on wealth tax and on the 720 declaration needs to be modelled first. A short analysis before applying is usually time well spent.