How this section is organised
By situation rather than by tax, because that is how problems arrive. Somebody does not have "a VAT question": they have a flat they let to holidaymakers and a suspicion that something is not being declared properly. The answers are grouped the same way, and most people find they are in two or three groups at once.
Holiday lets and residential property
Whether a let makes you self-employed, how many nights change the picture, which costs are deductible against rental income and which are not, what happens when the building's rules prohibit short lets, and where the line falls between a let and a hotel service for VAT. The pillar page is holiday let taxation.
Self-employment
How much to set aside each month, what can genuinely be deducted, which books are asked for in a review, what to do about an invoice already issued in error, and when a company starts to make sense. Background on self-employed tax returns in Spain, with registering as self-employed for anyone starting, and benefit and self-employment where the two overlap.
Working across borders
Charging VAT to clients outside Spain, the intra-Community register, exchange rates on foreign currency invoices, tax withheld abroad, payment platforms, and the recurring question of whether a single foreign client makes you an employee. See invoicing clients abroad and a US LLC while resident in Spain.
Non-residents with property here
How many returns a single flat produces, what is owed in a year when nothing was let, selling as a non-resident and the 3 % the buyer must retain, and the local land value tax on the sale. Start at non-resident property tax, imputed income and the form 210 guide.
Pensions and residence
Which country taxes a Spanish pension when you live elsewhere, the position of retired public servants, drawing pensions from two countries, and the residence certificates that make treaties work. Where residence itself is the question, that is settled first, because everything else follows from it.
Arriving, and the article 93 regime
Who qualifies, what the regime shelters and what it does not, how equity awards behave inside it, and what changes in the year it ends. See the article 93 regime.
Inheritances, gifts and wealth
Which region's rules apply, how an inherited property is valued, what a valuation review is, the reliefs that have to be claimed rather than granted, gifts from parents abroad, and when wealth tax and the charge on large fortunes are engaged.
Late years, surcharges and putting things right
The group most people reach this site through. How much the surcharge actually is, whether you can still be penalised after coming forward, how far back the tax office can go, how to correct a return already filed, and what happens when there is no money to pay. The starting points are the surcharge scale, whether coming forward protects you, how many years back they can go and regularising several years at once.
What these answers are, and are not
They are written by lawyers, they state where a position is arguable rather than settled, and they avoid promising outcomes, because nobody can promise how a particular file will be received. They are general information about how the rules work. They are not advice on your situation, which depends on facts a web page does not know.
Why the same few questions keep recurring
Because the Spanish system asks people to volunteer information rather than waiting to be told what they owe. Almost every obligation on this site is a self-assessment: you work out the figure, you file it, you pay it, and nobody sends you a bill first. That design explains most of what surprises newcomers — the returns that have to be filed at nil, the charge on a property that earns nothing, the deadlines that pass without a reminder, and the surcharge that starts running quietly from the day after one of them.
What to read first if you are new to all this
The one page that saves the most trouble is the calendar, because it converts an abstract set of obligations into dates. After that, read the pillar page for whichever situation is yours, and then the questions in that group. Working the other way round — reading individual answers without the framework around them — tends to produce a collection of facts that are each correct and do not add up to a position.
If your question is not here
Ask it. The tax calendar shows what falls due and when, pricing sets out the fees in full with no consultation charge for the first conversation, and contact reaches us directly. Most questions of this kind take a few minutes to answer properly once the facts are clear.