The Beckham Law in Spain: who qualifies and how to apply

The Beckham Law in Spain: who qualifies and how to apply

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Moving to Spain for work raises one question very quickly: what your tax bill will look like. For a lot of expats, the answer comes down to one special rule — the special expat tax regime, commonly called the Beckham Law.

The mechanism is simple: instead of being taxed as a Spanish resident on your worldwide income, you are taxed like a non-resident on your Spanish-source employment income, at a fixed rate of 24 percent on the first 600,000 euros and 47% above that. For higher earners, the difference is substantial.

The conditions are strict. In broad terms, you must click have been non-resident in Spain for the previous five tax years, your relocation must be linked to an employment contract or a director role, and the work must be carried out mainly in Spain. Recent reforms opened the door to digital nomads and some self-employed profiles.

The deadline is where most applications fail. 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 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 interaction with wealth tax and reporting duties should be calculated before deciding. A short analysis before applying avoids an expensive mistake.

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