How it works
Four steps. You are only involved in two of them.
How Salama Tax works
You tell us about your case
A two-minute form. With that we know which forms apply to you, how often they fall due and what it will cost. No sales call.
You drop the paperwork into your folder
You have your own folder in Google Drive. When an Airbnb or Booking statement or an expense invoice reaches you, you drag it in exactly as it is, nothing sorted or renamed. If you prefer, you can forward it by email instead.
We read it and do the numbers
Documents are read, classified and posted on their own. The figures are computed by code and checked by a person. That is what keeps the price where it is.
You see the draft, then we file
Before anything is submitted you get an email with the figures and where each one comes from. If you are happy with it, we file and the receipt goes into your folder.
AI reads and classifies. Code calculates. A person checks. No tax figure depends on a model getting arithmetic right.
From your first email to your first filing
Nothing here is a sales process. This is the actual sequence, and the only two points at which we need something from you are marked.
| Step | What happens | Who moves |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | You fill in the intake form, or simply write. It asks which situations apply to you, where you are resident and what has been filed so far. | You |
| 2 | We read it and reply with the returns your case actually requires, the deadlines that are already running and a fixed fee. If your case is not one we handle, this is where we say so. | Us |
| 3 | You get an engagement letter setting out the scope and the fee, and the authorisation that lets us file in your name. Both are signed electronically. | You |
| 4 | We check your identity and your Spanish tax number, open your folder and set up your file: each property, each owner and each share, or each activity and its code. | Us |
| 5 | You leave your documents in your folder as they reach you, or forward them by email. | You |
| 6 | We read, post and calculate, and send you the draft figures with the calculation explained. | Us |
| 7 | You say yes, or you say something does not look right. We file, and the receipt lands in your folder the same day. | You |
For a straightforward case, steps 1 to 4 take a few days, most of which is waiting for a signature. What sets the real start date is not us: it is the next deadline on your file.
Filings are made through the Spanish tax agency's registered-collaborator channel, under a signed authorisation that we keep. You do not hand over your digital certificate, and nobody here needs your Cl@ve PIN or your bank password. Anyone who asks you for those should be refused.
Your documents, as they arrive
Nothing is saved up for the end of the quarter. When a document reaches you, you drag it into the upload subfolder of your folder, exactly as it reached you. Platform statements as the platform sent them, supplier invoices as PDF attachments, the community charge as the scanned letter it is. Nothing renamed, nothing sorted, nothing converted, nothing summarised into a spreadsheet. The link is in your welcome email and in the email we send you every month.
Every day the system collects whatever is new, reads it and posts it. At the end of the month we go through what has come in, and if a document turns up for a period already calculated, the file is redone with it before anything is filed. What arrives once a quarter has been closed and filed is another matter: it may call for a supplementary return, and that is quoted separately.
The folder needs a Google account. If you have none, or simply prefer email, forward the documents to your personal Salama Tax address and they end up in the same place. And in a month with nothing to send, replying "no activity" to the monthly email is enough.
We ask for originals for a reason, and the reason is not convenience. A summary you prepare is a second version of the facts, and when a figure is questioned two years later it is the underlying document that has to be produced, not the summary. Working from the originals means what we file and what we can prove are the same thing.
What follows from that is on us. If something is missing we ask once, with a list. We do not send drip-fed requests through the quarter, and we do not ask you a second time for a document you have already sent. Deeds, the IBI receipt, your residence certificate and your registration details are asked for once and then kept, because they do not change every quarter.
Your folder, by year and by quarter
The day you become a client we create a folder for you in Google Drive and share it with you. Not a portal of ours that you log into: an ordinary folder you open from your own Google account, where you can download or copy every document whenever you like.
Inside it, the structure is always the same, which is what makes a document findable in a hurry three years later:
- A folder for each tax year, and inside it one per quarter where the tax is quarterly, or a single annual folder where it is not.
- Inside each period, what you sent us, what we produced, and the filing receipt with its secure verification code, which is the document that proves the return exists.
- A permanent folder that sits outside the years: deeds, the cadastral data, certificates of tax residence with their expiry dates, powers of attorney, registration documents and the engagement letter.
The point of keeping it in a folder you can open yourself is what happens later. If a letter arrives from the tax office in 2030 about 2026, the file is there, complete and in order. And if you move to another adviser, you take a full copy with you: there is nothing to request from us and nothing to wait for.
What you see before anything is filed
Before each filing you get a draft, and the draft is not a number in an email. It shows the income we have taken into account and where each figure came from, the expenses we have admitted and the ones we have not with the reason why, the apportionment applied and how it was arrived at, the rate and why that rate, the amount payable, and the date it will be charged.
You have three working days to say that something is wrong. In practice what those three days catch is not arithmetic — the arithmetic is done by code — but facts only you know: a week the flat was occupied by family, an invoice that belongs to another property, a payment that was a deposit returned rather than income.
If you do not reply and the deadline is close, we will file on the figures we hold rather than let the period lapse, because a late return is worse. But we would much rather you spent five minutes on the draft, and we will say so in the reminder.
When something is unclear
A blurred photo, an odd file format or a figure that does not add up raises a query that reaches a person with the document in front of them. If the issue is legal rather than accounting, it goes straight to the lawyer.
That second route matters more than it sounds. A share plan written in English, a letter from the tax office, an inheritance opening in another country or a query about whether an expense is deductible at all are not bookkeeping questions, and they are not answered by whoever happens to be posting invoices that week. They are answered by a lawyer, and if answering them properly is a piece of work in itself, we quote for it before starting rather than after.
How the fee works
The recurring fee is fixed and covers every return your case requires, not a number of them. It is invoiced quarterly in advance, one-off work is invoiced on delivery, and the invoice is a Spanish invoice with your tax number on it, which matters if your activity lets you deduct it. Spanish VAT is added where it applies.
Three things are not in the fee, and we would rather they were on this page than in a footnote: representation in a tax enquiry or an appeal, work on a case that predates you becoming a client — unfiled years, a regularisation — and legal work proper, such as an opinion or an application under a special regime. Each of those is quoted separately, in writing, before it is begun. You will not receive an invoice for something you did not agree to.
There is no lock-in and no minimum term: one month's notice ends it. The pricing page carries the full list.
If you leave
You take everything in the folder with you. It has been shared with you from day one, so you can copy or download the lot at any time.
We finish the period that has already been invoiced, hand over anything not yet in the folder, and answer a reasonable question from your new adviser about what was filed and why. No exit fee, and nothing held back as leverage.
When the case is not a routine one: Beckham, inheritances, catching up
A growing share of our work is not a quarter that repeats itself but a file with a beginning and an end: an application for the impatriate regime, an inheritance with assets in two countries, the sale of shares granted by a foreign employer, or three years of Modelo 210 that were never filed. The route is different, and it helps to know it in advance:
- We read the file first. You send what you have — contracts, equity plans, deeds, letters from the tax office — and a lawyer reads all of it before saying anything. A case that is not standard does not get a standard answer.
- A fixed quote, in writing. From what we have read we tell you what has to be filed, which risks we see and what it will cost. If a missing fact would change the price, we say so before starting.
- Working with your adviser abroad. If you have an adviser in your home country, you choose them and we coordinate: we give them the Spanish figures and take theirs. We do not advise on foreign law and we do not run a network of advisers abroad.
- Draft and your agreement. Nothing is filed until you have seen the draft and agreed to it in writing. On complex files, whatever goes to the tax office is always reviewed by the lawyer.
- Paying the tax. We explain the ways to pay: direct debit, a payment reference (NRC) from your bank, or a transfer to the firm's client-funds account so that we pay it in for you, identified with your client reference.
What we never do. We do not guarantee an outcome: we flag every risk we see, with the rule behind it, and the decision is yours. Nor do we use your digital certificate or anyone else's to file: we file as registered social collaborators, with your authorisation.
If your situation changes mid-year
Situations move: a second property is bought, a flat stops being let, someone changes country, or an inheritance appears. There is no need to start again or open a second file. You tell us by the same email and we adjust what needs adjusting: adding a new property to the Modelo 210, moving from an exempt quarter to one with VAT, or the year you stop being a non-resident and the flat moves from Modelo 210 to Spanish income tax. The fee is recalculated from the period in which the situation changes, never backwards, and we tell you before applying it. If what appears is a one-off matter — a sale, an inheritance, a letter from the tax office — it is quoted separately and you see the figure in writing before we start.
How long each piece of work takes
Timing depends mostly on how quickly the paperwork arrives. As a guide:
| Type of work | From complete papers to draft | What slows it down |
|---|---|---|
| A quarter for a holiday let or a self-employed client | Within the filing window, with no last-minute rush if the documents have been going into your folder as they arrive | Incomplete platform statements |
| A non-resident's annual Modelo 210 | A few days | The certificate of residence from the other country |
| A Beckham regime application (Modelo 149) | One to two weeks | The employer's certificate and the Social Security registration date |
| An international inheritance or gift | Depends on the notary and the other country | Translations, apostilles and valuations |
| Putting several past years right | One to three weeks | Rebuilding years with no paperwork |
A common example: an engineer who starts a contract in Madrid on 1 March has six months from her Social Security registration to apply for the impatriate regime with Modelo 149. If she writes to us in April there is plenty of room; in the last week of August it can still be done, but any missing document puts the deadline at risk, and that deadline is not extended.