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The essentials
You arrive in Spain with a signed contract, an offer from a company based here or an order from your group to run the Spanish subsidiary. You have heard of the Beckham Law as a low flat rate, and it is true that the regime can greatly reduce what you pay. But it does not apply by itself: it is an option you have to exercise yourself, with a specific form, within a deadline that starts running on the day you are registered with Social Security and that cannot be recovered once it has passed.
The official name is the special tax regime for workers, professionals, entrepreneurs and investors relocated to Spanish territory, and it is also called the inbound workers regime (régimen de impatriados). It is governed by article 93 of the Personal Income Tax Law and articles 113 to 120 of its regulations. While it applies you remain an IRPF taxpayer, but you calculate the tax with the rules of the Non-Resident Income Tax, with several special features. Its purpose is to attract foreign talent, workers and professionals relocated to Spanish territory. The popular name comes from the footballer David Beckham, one of the first well-known foreign professionals to use the regime after moving to Spain; professional athletes, however, are now excluded: the special employment relationship of professional sportspeople does not qualify.
Our tax law team studies your case before filing anything: whether you meet the requirements, whether the regime suits you compared with the general one and what happens with your family. If you are not yet sure in which country you will be resident for tax purposes this year, we start there, with your tax residency in Spain.
The practical question is not whether the Beckham Law is good, but whether it is good for you. Its advantages depend on your income, your assets and your family, so we set the two ways of being taxed side by side before you decide.
Moving to Spain and want to know whether you can use the Beckham Law?
Law 28/2022, on the promotion of the start-up ecosystem, rewrote article 93 with effect from 1 January 2023. These are the criteria we check one by one before the application. There is no separate approval process: on the basis of your notification, the Spanish Tax Agency (Agencia Tributaria) issues, if appropriate, the document that proves your option.
You cannot have been a Spanish tax resident during the five tax years before the year of your move. Before the reform it was ten. If you already lived in Spain a few years ago, we calculate your years carefully: a single year of tax residency within that window rules you out.
The move must take place, in the first year of the regime or the one before, for one of these reasons in article 93.1.b:
You cannot obtain income through a permanent establishment located in Spain. However, this limit does not apply to the entrepreneur or the highly qualified professional, who can carry out their economic activity while the regime applies (art. 113.2 RIRPF).
These figures come from the law and the IRPF regulations, and from the order that approves the forms. They are the ones that cause the most problems when expatriates arrive in Spain without advice.
6 months
maximum period to notify the option with form 149, counted from the start date of the activity shown in the Social Security registration
source: art. 116.1.a RIRPF
Year of the change + 5
duration of the regime: the tax year in which you become resident and the five following years
source: art. 93.1 LIRPF and art. 115 RIRPF
November and December
the only time to opt out, with effect from the following 1 January; if you opt out, you cannot come back
source: art. 117 RIRPF
1 month
period to tell the tax authorities that you have stopped meeting a requirement or that your relocation has ended
source: arts. 118.2 and 119.5 RIRPF
This is how we organise the process with people who relocate to Spain. Ideally we speak before you sign the contract, because the reason for the move and the registration date condition everything else. If your employer has its own HR team or advisors, we coordinate with them.
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We review your last five tax years, the reason for the move, your contract or relocation letter and whether you have any activity that could be considered a permanent establishment.
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We calculate what you would pay under the general IRPF and under the special regime, applying the tax rates of each one and taking into account the structure of your income, what you earn outside Spain and your family’s situation.
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We coordinate with your employer the documentation required by the regulations, with the start date shown in the registration, the workplace and the length of the contract.
4
Submission is made electronically only, online, to the AEAT (the Spanish Tax Agency). In Madrid, the AEAT’s territorial body is the Special Delegation of Madrid (Delegación Especial de Madrid).
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If appropriate, the Administration issues within a maximum of ten working days the document that proves your option, and you give it to your employer so that they apply the 24% withholding.
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Each year you file form 151, the annual tax declaration of the regime, within the general deadline of the income tax campaign, always online.
The sooner you tell us, the more room we have
A good share of the questions we receive come from here: which income goes into form 151 and which does not. This is the information we review first, following the income tax rules for the taxpayer who has opted in.
All the employment income you obtain while you apply the regime is considered earned in Spain, even if part of your work is done abroad. It is taxed at 24% up to 600,000 euros and at 47% above. The withholding applied by your employer follows those same figures.
Savings income obtained in Spain, such as dividends, interest and capital gains on assets located in Spain, is taxed with its own scale running from 19% to 30%, in the wording in force since 1 January 2025 after Law 7/2024. Foreign-source income, as a general rule, is not taxed in Spain while the regime lasts. Rental income from a property in Spain is taxed in Spain; rental income from a property abroad, as a rule, is not.
If you have cross-border employment and paid tax abroad on employment income earned in another country, you can deduct that international double taxation up to a limit of 30% of the part of the tax liability that corresponds to that income (art. 114 RIRPF). Whether a double tax agreement between Spain and that country changes anything is something we check case by case.
If you sell a flat or other real estate located in Spain while you apply the regime, the buyer must withhold part of the amount on account of your tax, as if you were a non-resident (art. 114.5 RIRPF).
Opting for the Beckham Law does not take you out of the rest of the system. In wealth tax you are taxed on a real-obligation basis: only on assets and rights located in Spain, not on those you hold abroad (art. 93.1 LIRPF and art. 5 Law 19/1991). The Tax Agency accepts that you opt to apply the rules of your region of residence; in Madrid that includes a conditional regional allowance while the temporary solidarity tax on large fortunes continues to be charged. We look at it case by case with the page on wealth tax in Madrid. Inheritances and gifts you receive have their own rules.
With this we do the preliminary analysis and prepare the notification:
The six-month period runs from the start date shown in the registration, not from when you settle into your flat or from when the company tells you about the regime. Anyone who leaves it to the sixth month often finds themselves without the employer’s document in time.
With dependent children, average salaries and no income outside Spain, the general regime may work out better. Also, once you opt out or are excluded, you cannot opt in again, and the consequences last for the rest of the six years.
A self-employed activity in Spain can be considered a permanent establishment and exclude you from the regime. The exception is only for the entrepreneur with an ENISA report and the highly qualified professional who meets article 93.1.b.4.
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Individuals who become Spanish tax residents through a relocation for one of the reasons in article 93: employment contract, employer’s order, remote work, role as company director, entrepreneurial activity or highly qualified professional. In addition, applicants cannot have been resident in the previous five years or obtain income through a permanent establishment, with the legal exceptions.
It is the notification with which you exercise the option for the special regime, and also the one used to opt out or to report an exclusion or the end of the relocation. It is filed electronically on the Tax Agency’s website, with the documents required by article 119 of the regulations.
It is the annual IRPF return for taxpayers under the inbound workers regime. It replaces the ordinary income tax return and is filed within the same period that is set each year for IRPF in general, online only.
Six months at most from the start date of the activity shown in your Social Security registration in Spain, or in the document that lets you keep the coverage of your country of origin. After that period, the option is lost.
Yes. Article 93 is in force in the wording given by Law 28/2022, with effect from 2023, and the last published amendment only affected the savings income scale from 2025. Before filing we always check the current consolidated text.
Yes, since 2023. The spouse, children under 25 or with a disability and, if there is no marriage, the other parent can opt in. They must move with you or afterwards, become tax resident in Spain and meet the requirements, and the sum of their taxable bases must be lower than yours.
You lose the personal and family allowances and the deductions, you cannot offset losses against gains and the deduction for double taxation has limits. In addition, opting out is irreversible and any breach excludes you from the year in which it occurs. That is why we compare both regimes before you apply.
If you work remotely as an employee for an employer and do so only by telematic means, article 93 expressly allows it, including with the digital nomad visa (visa for international remote work). If you work as a self-employed person for clients, it generally does not fit, unless your activity is entrepreneurial with an ENISA report or you are a highly qualified professional within the terms of the law.
We have six offices in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Málaga, Córdoba and Palma de Mallorca) and we also work with clients online.
