The Beckham Law in Spain: requirements, deadlines and what it actually saves you

The Beckham Law in Spain: requirements, deadlines and what it actually saves you

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Relocating to Spain brings up an immediate concern: what your tax bill will look like. For a lot of expats, the answer depends on a single regime — the special expat tax 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 your Spanish-source employment income, at a fixed rate of 24% up to 600,000 euros and 47% above that. If your salary is significant, the difference is substantial.

The conditions are strict. As a general rule, you must not have been a Spanish tax resident in the five years before the click aquí move, your relocation must be linked to an employment contract or a director role, and the activity must be performed principally on Spanish territory. Recent reforms opened the door to digital nomads and some self-employed profiles.

Timing is the part people get wrong. You have to apply within six months of registering with Spanish social security. Miss it and you cannot recover it later. The benefit then runs for a total of six tax years.

It is not automatically the better option. If you have significant income outside Spain, the interaction with wealth tax and reporting duties needs to be modelled first. Running the numbers in advance is usually time well spent.

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