The full guide
If you’re moving to Spain for a job, the Beckham Law could be the biggest money decision of your first year. It can cut the tax on your salary dramatically for six years. It can also be useless to you, and there’s a strict six-month window to apply. Here’s how it works, who it suits and how to apply yourself.
What the Beckham Law actually is
The Beckham Law is the nickname for Spain’s special tax regime for people who move here to work. Its official name is the régimen especial de trabajadores desplazados, and it sits in article 93 of Spain’s income tax law. It got the nickname in 2005, when David Beckham signed for Real Madrid and became its most famous user.
The idea is simple. You live in Spain and become tax resident, but Hacienda taxes you as if you were a non-resident. Your salary is taxed at a flat 24% up to €600,000 a year, and most of the income you earn outside Spain isn’t taxed here at all. It lasts for the tax year you become resident and the five years after that.
The most common Beckham Law story isn’t someone who didn’t qualify. It’s someone who did, and found out after the deadline had passed. So if you only take one thing from this guide, make it this: you have six months.
What the 24% covers, and what it doesn’t
Under the regime, all your employment income counts as Spanish income, even the part paid from abroad. It’s taxed at 24% up to €600,000 a year and at 47% on anything above that. Everything else is treated the way a non-resident’s income would be:
Foreign income that isn’t salary, such as rent from a flat back home or foreign dividends and interest, isn’t taxed in Spain.
Spanish dividends, interest and capital gains are taxed separately, at the savings rates.
Wealth tax, if it applies to you, only counts your assets in Spain.
You don’t have to file form 720, the declaration of assets held abroad.
The trade-off: you give up the personal allowances and most of the deductions a normal resident gets, and you file a special return each year (form 151) instead of the usual Renta.
How it compares with the normal system
At a glance | Beckham Law | Normal system |
|---|---|---|
Salary up to €600,000 | Flat 24% | Progressive, from about 19% to 45–54% depending on your region |
Salary above €600,000 | 47% | Your region’s top rate |
Foreign rent, dividends and interest | Not taxed in Spain | Taxed in Spain, with credit for tax paid abroad |
Wealth tax | Spanish assets only | Worldwide assets, above your region’s threshold |
Form 720 (assets abroad) | Not required | Required above €50,000 per category |
Personal allowances and deductions | No | Yes |
Annual return | Form 151 | Form 100 (the Renta) |
Who qualifies
The rules were widened in 2023 by the Startup Law, so more people qualify than before. You need to tick three boxes.
1. You haven’t been tax resident in Spain in the last five years
It used to be ten. The test is the normal tax residence one: spending more than 183 days in Spain in a calendar year, or Spain being the centre of your work or finances. If that applied to you in any of the five tax years before your move, you don’t qualify.
2. You’re moving for a reason the law accepts
A job with a Spanish employer, or a transfer to Spain by a foreign employer.
Remote work for a foreign company as an employee, typically on the digital nomad visa.
Becoming a director of a company. If the company mainly holds assets rather than trading, you can’t own 25% or more of it.
Running an innovative business that’s been certified as an entrepreneurial activity, usually through ENISA.
Working as a highly qualified professional for startups, or in training, research, development and innovation, under specific conditions.
3. You won’t earn income through a permanent establishment in Spain
In plain English, you can’t simply be a self-employed person running your own business here. That’s why most freelancers and autónomos, including freelancers on the digital nomad visa, don’t qualify. The only exceptions are the certified entrepreneur and highly qualified professional routes above.
Going freelance instead? Read our guide on becoming autónomo without a gestor and plan your budget around the normal tax system.
Is it worth it for you?
For most people on a good salary, yes. But it isn’t automatic. Because you lose the personal allowance and deductions, a flat 24% can work out worse than the normal system on a modest salary. As a rough guide, it starts to pay off once your salary is comfortably above about €60,000, and it’s a clear win well above that.
What else you earn matters too. If you have rental income, investments or a pension from abroad, keeping them out of Spanish tax can be worth more than the saving on your salary. On the other hand, if your partner doesn’t work and you have children, the family allowances you give up can tip the balance the other way.
Run the numbers both ways before you file. One session with a tax adviser costs far less than six years on the wrong regime.
The deadline that catches people out
You have six months to apply, counted from the start of your activity in Spain. For most people, that’s the date of your registration with Spanish social security (your alta). If you stay in your home country’s social security system, it’s the date on the document that allows that, such as an A1 certificate.
Miss it and that’s it. There’s no late application and no appeal. If your start date was five months ago, stop reading and file today.
How to apply, step by step
Get your NIE and register with social security. Your employer usually does the registration, so ask them for the date in writing.
Get a digital certificate or Cl@ve. Form 149 is filed online on the Tax Agency’s e-office.
Gather your evidence: your employment contract or a letter from your employer confirming the move, your social security registration or A1 certificate, and your visa or residence document if you’re from outside the EU.
File form 149 within six months. Choose the option to apply for the special regime, fill in your details and your employer’s, and keep the submission receipt.
Get your confirmation. Hacienda issues a document confirming you’re in the regime. Give your employer a copy so they withhold tax at 24% from your payslips.
File form 151 every year instead of the normal Renta, during the usual tax return season from April to June.
Plan for the end. After your sixth tax year you move to the normal system, and your worldwide income becomes taxable in Spain.
Bringing your family
Since 2023, your spouse and children can join the regime too, which is one of the biggest improvements to it. Children must be under 25, or any age if they have a disability. If you aren’t married, the other parent of your children can qualify instead of a spouse.
They need to move to Spain with you or later, by the end of your first tax year under the regime, and their combined income must be lower than yours. Each person files their own form 149, so do theirs at the same time as yours.
Leaving the regime early
You can give up the regime voluntarily, also with form 149, but only in November or December, and it takes effect from the following 1 January. Once you renounce it, you can’t opt back in. If you stop meeting the conditions, for example because the job that brought you here ends, get advice quickly: you may need to tell Hacienda within a month.
The mistakes that cost the most
Missing the six-month window, usually because nobody mentioned the regime existed.
Assuming freelancing qualifies. Unless you fit the entrepreneur or highly qualified routes, it doesn’t.
Filing the normal Renta out of habit instead of form 151.
Forgetting to give your employer the confirmation, so your payslips keep the normal withholding.
Opting in when the normal system would have been cheaper.
Our honest take
If you’re an employee earning well and you’ve just moved, the Beckham Law is one of the best things Spain offers newcomers, and the application is a single online form you can file yourself. The paperwork isn’t the hard part. The hard part is knowing it exists in time, and being honest about whether it actually saves you money.
If your case is simple, use the checklist below and file it yourself. If you have investments, a partner with income or a director role, a single session with an adviser is money well spent.
