Lucía and the question almost every freelancer asks the wrong way round
Lucía Ferreyra is an Argentinian product designer who has worked for herself for eight years, for clients all over the world. She wants to settle in Málaga, register as an autónoma (the Spanish term for a self-employed person) and invoice around 70,000 € a year from here. Someone told her that "with the Beckham you pay 24 %", and she wrote to us with the rate already worked out. The right question was not how much she would pay but which door of article 93 she would come in through. The regime for workers moving to Spain, commonly called the Beckham regime, is not designed for just any self-employed activity, and the law says so quite bluntly.
The general rule: the regime does not accept business activities
Article 93.1.c of the IRPF Law (Spanish personal income tax) requires the taxpayer not to obtain income that would be classed as obtained through a permanent establishment in Spain, "except in the case provided for in letter b).3.º and 4.º". In plain terms: a business activity carried on from a fixed base in Spain falls outside the regime, with two express exceptions. Article 113.2 of the IRPF Regulations closes the point without ambiguity: during the years of the regime, the only business activities the taxpayer may carry on are the entrepreneurial one, the provision of services to start-ups, and training, research, development and innovation.
So the answer begins with "it depends on what kind of self-employed person you are", and for many it ends with "no".
The three doors that do exist
| Door | Legal basis | What you need before you move |
|---|---|---|
| Entrepreneurial activity | Art. 93.1.b.3.º of the IRPF Law and art. 113.2 of the Regulations | A favourable report from ENISA; if you are not an EU citizen, also the residence permit for business activity under art. 69 of Law 14/2013 |
| Highly qualified professional providing services to start-ups | Art. 93.1.b.4.º of the IRPF Law | The qualifications in art. 71 of Law 14/2013 (or the residence permit under that article), and the company must be registered as a start-up |
| Training, research, development and innovation | Art. 93.1.b.4.º of the IRPF Law | Fitting one of the cases in art. 72.1 of Law 14/2013 (or its residence permit) |
The entrepreneur with an ENISA report
The Regulations define as entrepreneurial an activity that is innovative or of special economic interest to Spain and has a favourable report from ENISA, the Spanish state company that assesses innovative business projects. For citizens of the European Union, the person concerned applies for the report before moving, and article 113.2 states that it will be issued within ten working days of ENISA receiving the application. For someone from outside the EU, the key is the residence permit for entrepreneurs, which must also exist before the move.
The advantage of this route is considerable: article 93.2.b provides that all the income from the entrepreneurial activity obtained during the regime is treated as obtained in Spain and is taxed on the special scale. The difficulty is that having an idea is not enough: you have to convince ENISA that the project deserves that classification.
The highly qualified professional
This door adds a numerical requirement that is checked every year: the pay for services to start-ups, or for training and R&D activities, must together account for more than 40 % of all the taxpayer's business, professional and employment income.
Let us do the sum with two versions of Lucía's year.
Version A. Lucía invoices 48,000 € to a registered start-up and receives 22,000 € in salary as an associate lecturer at a design school.
- Total business, professional and employment income: 48,000 + 22,000 = 70,000 €.
- Part that comes from the start-up: 48,000 €.
- Percentage: 48,000 / 70,000 = 68.6 %. It exceeds 40 %.
Version B. Lucía invoices 20,000 € to the start-up and 50,000 € to her long-standing clients, agencies that do not have that status.
- Total: 70,000 €.
- Part from the start-up: 20,000 €.
- Percentage: 28.6 %. It does not reach 40 %.
And version B has a second problem, more serious than the percentage: those 50,000 € from ordinary clients are a business activity that is not among the three allowed by article 113.2. Even if the percentage worked, invoicing ordinary clients puts the whole regime at risk.
The training and R&D route
This is the least used and the most technical. It is treated as met when one of the cases in article 72.1 of Law 14/2013 applies, and in particular when the professional holds the residence permit under that article before moving. It fits research profiles linked to universities, technology centres or documented innovation projects, not generic consultancy that calls itself "innovative".
Article 93.1.b.1.º mentions the visa for international remote work, but it does so expressly for "employed workers". A digital nomad who invoices foreign clients as a freelancer does not come in through that route, whatever visa they hold. If that is your profile and you have neither an ENISA report nor services to a start-up, the regime is out of your reach, and you should know that before organising your move around a 24 % rate you will not have.
The confusion between a visa and a tax regime
Many people mix up two different procedures. The visa or residence permit settles whether you can live and work in Spain. The regime in article 93 settles how you are taxed. Some permits under Law 14/2013 make proof easier in Modelo 149 (the form used to opt into the regime), because the Regulations accept them as direct evidence, but no permit puts you in the regime if your real activity is not the one the law describes. And the other way round: an EU citizen does not need a residence permit, but does need the ENISA report if coming in as an entrepreneur.
What if my activity is mixed?
This is the most common case in practice. A professional arrives hired by a Spanish company, that is, through the employment contract door, and wants to keep doing the odd job on their own account. The Regulations leave no room: if they carry on a business activity other than the three permitted ones, they breach a condition of the regime, and article 118 provides for exclusion with effect in the same tax period in which the breach happens, with an obligation to report it within a month. Moreover, anyone who is excluded cannot opt again.
That is why, before accepting that first freelance job while in the regime, you need to run the full numbers: what you earn from the job against what it costs to move the whole year, salary included, onto the ordinary scale.
What to prepare if one of the doors fits you
| Profile | What to gather before coming |
|---|---|
| EU entrepreneur | A business plan you can defend and an application to ENISA made in good time |
| Non-EU entrepreneur | A residence permit for business activity before the move |
| Professional working for start-ups | Qualifications, a contract or engagement with the start-up and proof of its registration |
| R&D | Project documentation and, where relevant, the art. 72 permit |
The deadline for Modelo 149 is, in every case, still six months from the start date of the activity shown in the Social Security registration, under article 116 of the Regulations. For a self-employed person, that means the date of registration in the Social Security scheme for the self-employed starts the clock.
If you would like us to look at your specific case before you decide to register, tell us about your activity and your clients on the Beckham form. We have a broader guide on the self-employed and the Beckham regime, and if your plan is to work for a single foreign company under an employment contract, the answer changes completely: we explain it in remote work for a company abroad.
A warning about the figures that go around
The 24 % only applies to someone who is validly in the regime. Nobody can assure you that ENISA will issue a favourable report or that the Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax agency, will accept that your activity fits one of the three doors; what we can do is review your documents with the text of the law in front of us and tell you frankly where we see the risk. And if the conclusion is that your case does not qualify, that is useful information too: it saves you building a life plan around a tax rate that does not apply to you.
How self-employed work fits into the regime's annual return, and the other obligations it creates, is described on the Salama Tax page devoted to article 93.