RSUs in Spain. Spanish law has no figure called an RSU. Your tax comes from three places at once: what the plan says, where you were resident while it vested, and what you did with the shares afterwards. Change one of the three and the answer changes, sometimes by a lot of money.
Cease-of-activity files against tourist flats
This is what reaches us from Madrid more than anything else. The Ayuntamiento de Madrid, the city council, has spent years opening cease-of-activity proceedings against viviendas de uso turístico that do not fit the planning rules, and the letter lands just the same on an owner who filed a declaración responsable — the self-certified notice that puts a property on the regional tourism register — as on one who never filed anything.
The argument underneath is a planning argument, not a tax one: if the use recorded for the building is not lodging use, the activity is not covered however faithfully the regional register took it in. That is why the defence is fought inside the municipal file, with the planning documents in hand, and not at the Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax authority.
Two words are worth unpacking for anyone reading this from abroad. A vivienda de uso turístico is an entire dwelling marketed for short tourist stays, as opposed to a hotel room or an ordinary residential lease. And a declaración responsable is not a licence: it is a statement in which you certify that you meet the requirements and start trading the same day, which is why so many owners are convinced they were authorised when what they actually did was self-certify. The administration keeps its power to check afterwards, and in Madrid it uses it.
While the file is being processed, the activity has existed and has produced income. That has to be declared all the same. We have seen owners concentrate so hard on the closure that the quarterly returns slipped, and finish with two problems instead of one. We take that side in tourist rentals.
The full rebate on wealth tax
The Comunidad de Madrid, the regional government, rebates the wealth tax liability, and out of that comes the most repeated misunderstanding we meet here: believing there is nothing to file.
The rebate removes the amount payable, not the duty to declare. If your assets and rights go above 2.000.000 €, Modelo 714, the wealth tax return, is filed even when the result is zero. And there is a second consequence that surprises people more: the fact that your region rebates the tax is precisely what switches on the state solidarity tax on large fortunes, which collects what Madrid has chosen to leave uncollected.
Put another way, a regional rebate does not always mean paying less; it means paying someone else. Who ends up collecting depends on where your wealth sits and how much of it there is. It is developed in wealth tax and in the comparison wealth tax or the tax on large fortunes.
And plusvalía municipal, which here belongs to the council
Plusvalía municipal is the local tax on the increase in the value of urban land when a property changes hands. Every council settles it under its own by-law, with its own coefficients and its own counter. In Madrid it is self-assessed, which means the calculation is yours and so is the error if there is one: it is put right by applying for the rectification of your own self-assessment, with four years to do so.
The two methods of calculation always both apply and the lower one is payable, but you are the one who has to pick it: the council does not do that for you. And where there was no increase in land value there is no tax, although that has to be declared and proved with both deeds, the one you bought with and the one you sold with. We handle it in plusvalía municipal.
Who writes to us from Madrid
| Who | What they usually face |
|---|---|
| Owner of a tourist flat in the centre | The cease-of-activity file, and alongside it VAT, income tax on the rent and the platform commissions |
| Professional invoicing clients abroad | Registration on the ROI, the Spanish EU VAT register, Modelo 349 and the place-of-supply rules |
| New arrival on an international contract | The six months of Modelo 149 to opt into the article 93 regime, which are not extended |
| Heir to a flat in Madrid | Six months for inheritance tax, and thirty working days where the transfer was a gift |
| Owner living abroad | One Modelo 210, the non-resident income tax return, per property and per owner, let or empty |
Working with Madrid, remotely
Remotely, and not as a concession: it is simply how the firm runs. Nobody has to come to an office or print anything. You leave the paperwork in your folder as it reaches you, or forward it by email; we read it, we do the bookkeeping, we show you the figures and we file. If there is a deadline already running in your case, that jumps the queue.
We write in Spanish, English and French, which in Madrid is not a small detail: a good part of what we carry here has an international element somewhere in it, from the foreign landlord to the employee holding shares in a United States parent company.
Two practical points about the mechanics. With a power of attorney we file in your name and receive the electronic notifications, so nothing hangs on your holding a Spanish digital certificate of your own. And everything we send you separates what is settled from what is open to argument. We do not guarantee an outcome, either at the tax office or at the city council: those decisions are not ours to make, and we would rather tell you the odds than sell you a certainty.
An engineer arriving in Madrid with RSUs from her parent company: year one, in figures
A profile that reaches us almost every month: an employment contract with the Madrid subsidiary of a US technology group, registration with Spanish Social Security on 1 March 2026 and a package of restricted stock units (RSUs, shares promised by the employer that only become hers once they vest) that vests in October. She spends 306 days of the year in Spain, so she is tax resident from 2026, and that is also the first year of the article 93 regime — the special regime for people who move to Spain for work, often called the Beckham regime — if she opts in on time: the year of arrival and the five that follow.
| Item for 2026 | Amount | How the regime treats it |
|---|---|---|
| Salary from March to December | 130,000 € | Employment income at 24 % |
| RSUs vesting in October | 40,000 € | Employment income in kind, also at 24 % |
| Total employment income | 170,000 € | Below 600,000 €: all of it at 24 % |
| Tax for the year | 40,800 € | 170,000 × 24 % |
| Withheld by the subsidiary on the salary | 31,200 € | 130,000 × 24 % |
| Balance if nobody withheld on the RSUs | 9,600 € | Payable with Modelo 151 in June 2027 |
The 9,600 € is neither a surcharge nor a penalty: it is the tax on the shares that nobody paid in advance. It happens when the parent company sells part of the shares to cover taxes in its own country and the Spanish subsidiary does not make the payment on account that Spanish law requires on pay in kind. Better to know in October than in June. How equity works inside the regime is in stock options and RSUs under article 93.
The Madrid impatriate's calendar, from arrival to exit
| When | What is filed | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Within six months of the Social Security registration (in the example, early September 2026) | Modelo 149, the election for the regime | It is a hard deadline: once missed, there is no second chance for that move |
| After the election | Proof of the election handed to the employer | So that the subsidiary withholds at 24 % and not on the general scale |
| From April to 30 June each year, 2027 to 2032 | Modelo 151 for the previous year | It replaces the ordinary income tax return while the regime lasts |
| Every 31 December | A snapshot of the assets located in Spain | Inside the regime, wealth tax is paid only on what is here |
| First quarter of 2033 | Modelo 720 for 2032, if the thresholds are exceeded | It is the first ordinary year, and the US brokerage account comes in all at once |
The Modelo 149 deadline runs from the start date shown on the Social Security registration, not from the day you land or the day you sign the contract. It is explained step by step in Modelo 149, and if you want us to check your date before it runs out, the form is the one for the Beckham regime.
For six tax years the sale of shares in a foreign company is not taxed here, and that tempts people to keep no records at all. The problem arrives in 2032: you become taxable on your worldwide income, the shares you still hold have to be reported on Modelo 720 and, when you sell them, you will need to prove at what value and on what date you received them. Someone who kept every vesting confirmation sorts it out in an afternoon; someone who did not rebuilds it from the statements of a broker whose password they no longer remember. We cover it in the year the regime ends.