Until Ley 28/2022, the 2022 start-up act, changed it, the article 93 regime (the special tax regime for people moving to Spain, known as the Beckham regime) was individual: the person who moved for work opted in, and the rest of the family was taxed under ordinary IRPF, the standard Spanish personal income tax, from the first year, on their worldwide income and with their own Modelo 720 if it applied. Since then the family can join too, but not automatically and not as a block: each member files his or her own option, meets his or her own requirements and files a separate return.
Who can join
- The spouse of the taxpayer who enters the regime.
- Children under twenty-five, and children of any age if they have a disability.
- Where there is no marriage, the other parent of those children.
If there is no marriage and there are no children in common, the partner fits none of the three cases, however stable the relationship and even if the move was made together. It is one of the questions we receive most often, and today that is the answer. What can happen is that the partner has access to the regime in his or her own right, if he or she moves for a reason that allows it: an employment contract, international remote work or an entrepreneurial activity. It is worth checking before ruling it out.
The requirements, one by one
| Requirement | How it is met |
|---|---|
| Move | Moving to Spain with the main taxpayer, or after him or her but before the end of the first tax year in which the regime applies |
| Tax residence | Becoming tax resident in Spain as a result of the move |
| History | Not having been tax resident in Spain in the five previous tax years |
| Activity | Not obtaining income classed as obtained through a permanent establishment, except in the cases the rules themselves allow |
| Proportion of income | The combined taxable bases of the family members who join must be lower than the taxable base of the main taxpayer |
That last requirement is the one that breaks the most plans, and it is worth understanding properly: it measures the family members who join, taken together, against the main taxpayer. If the spouse has significant income of his or her own (a professional career in full swing, a portfolio producing Spanish-source returns) he or she may simply not fit.
The time rule, which is the one people miss
The window for moving is not open-ended: the family member has to arrive with the main taxpayer or before the end of the first tax year in which the regime applies. Translated into the real calendar of an international move, with a school year in the way and a house to sell, that means a staggered move has a deadline.
The typical situation: he arrives in September with the contract signed, and she stays behind to close up the house and let the children finish the school year, planning to move "next summer". If that summer falls outside the first tax year of the regime, the family can no longer join. There is no extension for good reasons.
Each one files a Modelo 149, and each one files a Modelo 151
The extension does not create a joint return or a tax family unit. Each family member files his or her own Modelo 149 to opt in, with his or her own documents, and afterwards his or her own Modelo 151, the annual return under the regime, every year. The deadlines and mechanics of Modelo 149 are the same as for the main taxpayer, and they are set out in Modelo 149: deadline, routes in and documents.
And once inside, each one is taxed under the regime's rules: their employment income, wherever it comes from, goes into their own Modelo 151; their foreign-source income other than employment income does not. The detail is in what goes into Modelo 151 and what does not.
The family's regime hangs on the main taxpayer's
The length of the family members' regime is tied to that of the main taxpayer: when his or hers ends, theirs end too. There are no six years of their own that start counting from each person's arrival. Someone who moves two years after the main taxpayer does not have six tax years, only those the main taxpayer has left.
If the main taxpayer renounces, is excluded or stops being an IRPF taxpayer because he or she leaves Spain, you have to analyse what happens to the regime of the family who stayed here. It is not a rare scenario: it happens with transfers within the same corporate group and with separations. It is worth looking at before the decision is taken, because the consequences may reach three or four different returns.
The effect almost nobody calculates: Modelo 720
Someone under article 93 does not file Modelo 720, the Spanish information return on assets held abroad. Someone who is not under the regime and is tax resident in Spain does, subject to the thresholds for each block.
That turns the family extension into something more than a saving on rates. In a marriage where the spouse is the holder or joint holder of the accounts, the portfolio or the house in the home country, whether or not he or she joins the regime decides whether there is a Modelo 720 from the first year or none until the regime ends. And the formal ownership of those assets is usually divided differently from how the family perceives it. How the thresholds are counted is explained in the three blocks and the €50,000 threshold.
Three real fits
A married couple with one salary. A clean fit: the spouse with no income easily meets the taxable base requirement and comes in with the main taxpayer. What has to be watched are the dates of the move.
A married couple with two careers. The numbers have to be run first: if the spouse's taxable base comes close to the main taxpayer's, the requirement is not met, and sometimes the answer is not the extension but for each of them to enter the regime by their own route, if their contract allows it.
Children with income of their own. An adult child with a contract in Spain, or with income from a gift they received, has his or her own taxable base and counts in the calculation. It is a detail that gets forgotten because it occurs to nobody that the child "counts".
The calculation of the bases, with numbers
The requirement that the combined taxable bases of the family members be lower than the main taxpayer's is easier to understand with an example. Take a family with two adults and a twenty-two-year-old son who works part-time:
| Member | Estimated taxable base | Family members' running total |
|---|---|---|
| Main taxpayer | €150,000 | — |
| Spouse | €95,000 | €95,000 |
| Son | €14,000 | €109,000 |
In that scenario the requirement is met: €109,000 is lower than €150,000. If the spouse earned €140,000, the total with the son would exceed the main taxpayer's base and the fit would break for both family members, not only for the one who earns more.
From that follows a consequence worth keeping in mind: the check is not done once and for all. The bases change every year, and with them compliance with the requirement can change too. That is why, when we plan a family extension, we look not only at the year of arrival but at the likely path of the following tax years, including any equity that each of them may vest.
The alternative: each one through his or her own door
When the extension does not fit, the regime in one's own right may still fit. A spouse with his or her own contract in Spain, with international remote work for a company based abroad or with an entrepreneurial activity has his or her own route in, with his or her own six-month deadline counted from his or her own social security registration. It is a check we always make before ruling anything out, because the answer changes the result for the whole family and because the two deadlines run in parallel.
Twenty-five and other borderlines
The age limit for children, and how it is checked over the life of the regime, is one of the questions we prefer to analyse case by case rather than state a hard and fast rule. The same goes for the effects of a divorce that happens along the way or of a child born once the family is already in Spain. These are situations where the rules do not say everything, and where we would rather explain the risk to you than give you a certainty we do not have.
How we work on it
The family extension is decided with a spreadsheet and a calendar. The spreadsheet compares, for each member, the cost under the regime and under ordinary IRPF, including the effect of wealth tax and of Modelo 720. The calendar sets the real deadline for each person's move and the six months for each Modelo 149. If either of the two does not add up, we say so before accepting the engagement.
And we repeat it here too: we do not guarantee that any regime will be granted, because that does not depend on us. What we can do is stop it being lost over a date. Tell us about your family's situation in the Beckham regime form: we ask who is arriving, when and with what income, which is exactly what decides this case.