A newer kind of wealthy mover is arriving in Spain: the technology founder, the early employee with vested equity, the crypto holder whose balance sheet is large, liquid and often unrealized. They are drawn by the same lifestyle as everyone else, but their tax situation is unusually sensitive to timing and to detail, and the mistakes available to them are bigger than most. For this group, when they move and what they do around the move can matter as much as the move itself.
Timing is everything
The defining feature of new-money wealth is that much of it is unrealized: shares not yet sold, tokens not yet cashed, a liquidity event on the horizon. Becoming Spanish tax resident before or after such an event can produce very different outcomes, because residence determines where a gain is taxed. A founder who moves to Spain and then sells, without having planned the sequence, can convert a manageable position into a large Spanish liability that earlier planning would have shaped. The order of events is not a detail; it is often the whole game.
What makes the sequence unforgiving is the shape of the test. Article 9 of the personal income tax law treats an individual as resident when he spends more than 183 days in Spanish territory during the calendar year, or when the main centre of his economic interests is in Spain. Both limbs are measured against the calendar year, not the date of arrival, so residence attaches to the whole tax period: a disposal completed in February can land inside a year that only became Spanish in September.
Nor is the count mechanical. Sporadic absences are added back unless residence elsewhere is proved by a certificate from that authority, and residence is presumed where the spouse and dependent minor children live in Spain. The 183 days question is settled first, or not at all.
Exit taxes and the country you leave
Timing cuts both ways, because the country being left may impose its own charge on departure. Some jurisdictions tax unrealized gains when a wealthy resident emigrates, so the move can trigger a liability at the origin as well as shape the position at the destination. A founder relocating to Spain has to look backward at the exit rules of the country of departure as carefully as forward at Spain, and the two analyses have to be done together, not in sequence.
Spain applies the same logic to anyone who later leaves. Article 95 bis treats the excess of market value over cost of shares in any entity as a capital gain on loss of resident status, where that status was held for ten of the fifteen preceding tax periods and either the holdings exceed four million euros, or the stake exceeds 25 per cent and is worth over one million.
That count runs on the condition of being an income tax payer, which the inbound regime preserves rather than suspends. Spain’s exit tax on large shareholdings reaches the reader who arrived unrealized and expects to move again.
For new money, the balance sheet is unrealized and the move is a switch. Flip it in the wrong order and a liquidity event lands in the wrong country.
The inbound regime after the Startups Law
Any account of the Spanish inbound regime written before 2023 describes a narrower rule than the one in force. Article 93 was rewritten with effect from 1 January 2023 by the third final provision of Ley 28/2022, the law on emerging companies. The window of prior absence fell from ten tax periods to five, and the regime runs for six.
The routes in changed most. An employment contract still qualifies, and so does remote work using exclusively computer and telecommunication means, with the international teleworking visa named as an example. Becoming administrator qualifies with no participation ceiling, unless the entity is patrimonial, in which case the administrator cannot hold a stake that makes it a related party. Certified entrepreneurial activity qualifies, as does a highly qualified professional serving emerging companies.
The family extension is new and narrow. Spouse, children under 25 or of any age with a disability, and their parent where there is no marriage, qualify if they move before the end of the main taxpayer’s first period and produce a lower combined base. Article 116 of the income tax regulation allows six months to elect, counted from the start date on the Spanish Social Security registration.
What the regime does not cover
The regime exempts nobody from anything. It substitutes a basis of assessment: the individual stays a personal income tax payer but computes the tax under non resident rules for income obtained without a permanent establishment. Misreading it is how a large balance sheet arrives on a wrong assumption.
Two consequences follow. All employment income obtained while the regime applies is deemed obtained in Spanish territory, so salary, bonus and vesting equity sit inside the Spanish base. Everything else is taxed only so far as obtained in Spanish territory, so income and gains on assets outside Spain fall outside. The regime is generous on the foreign portfolio and unhelpful on the foreign payroll.
The mechanics reinforce it. The exemptions an ordinary non resident could invoke are disapplied, apart from the one for employment income in kind. Income is taxed cumulatively with no offsetting between items, so a loss on one line does not net against a gain on another, and the general base runs at 24 per cent to 600,000 euros and 47 per cent above.
Carried interest and the founder who manages a fund
The same law added the fifty third additional provision of the income tax law, in force since 1 January 2023, which finally gives carried interest a statutory characterisation. Returns from units, shares or rights conferring special economic rights in the closed ended vehicles the provision lists, obtained by their administrators, managers or employees, are employment income, of which 50 per cent enters the base.
The halving carries conditions: the special rights must be conditional on the other investors obtaining a minimum return defined in the vehicle’s own rules, and the instrument held five years. It is unavailable where the rights come from a non cooperative jurisdiction. The interaction is the point: the law calls carry employment income, and the regime deems all employment income Spanish, so the carry sits inside the Spanish base.
Crypto has its own rules
Crypto assets bring specific Spanish considerations: how holdings and disposals are taxed, and reporting obligations aimed specifically at digital assets and at those held abroad. A holder who assumed crypto sits outside the system, or who did not realize foreign-held digital assets can be reportable, is exposed, and the exposure compounds with the size of the position. This is reporting to get right on arrival, alongside the Modelo 720 world for other foreign assets, still owed although its punitive apparatus did not survive: the Court of Justice condemned the penalty regime on 27 January 2022 in case C-788/19, and Ley 5/2022 rewrote the framework.
The crypto obligation is separate. Article 42 quater of the general tax management regulation, added by Real Decreto 249/2023, reaches residents holding virtual currencies abroad with a custodian of private keys, the return being Modelo 721, approved by Orden HFP/886/2023. Nothing is due where all balances at 31 December total 50,000 euros or less; once that is passed, every coin is reported, not the excess. The window is 1 January to 31 March, and a later return falls due only if the total rises by more than 20,000 euros. Neither the regulation nor the order carves out taxpayers under the inbound regime.
The threshold matters less than it looks, because the authority receives the other half independently. Resident providers report the balances they custody and the operations they intermediate, through Modelo 172 and Modelo 173, approved by Orden HFP/887/2023, identifying holders by tax number.
The European layer closes what remains, and its dates are worth stating precisely. DAC8, Council Directive (EU) 2023/2226 of 17 October 2023, required Member States to adopt implementing measures by 31 December 2025 and apply them from 1 January 2026, the first information covering calendar years from that date. Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, MiCA, applies from 30 December 2024, its Titles III and IV from 30 June 2024.
The wealth taxes the regime does not shelter
A founder who has modelled income tax and stopped there has modelled half the charge. Wealth tax is annual, falls on a balance sheet rather than a realisation, and for an unrealized position is often the larger number. Inside the regime it reaches only Spanish situated assets; once the regime expires, it runs on worldwide net wealth.
The state layer is the temporary solidarity tax on large fortunes created by article 3 of Ley 38/2022, complementary to wealth tax, accruing on 31 December on net wealth above three million euros, with an exempt minimum of 700,000 euros and a scale running at zero, then 1.7, 2.1 and 3.5 per cent. Created as temporary, it has been extended until wealth taxation is reviewed, so planning on its expiry is planning on a political calendar rather than a legal one.
Two features defeat the obvious answer. Paragraph Two.2 states the tax may not be ceded to the Autonomous Communities, so no regional rebate reaches it. Paragraph Fifteen allows deduction of the wealth tax quota of the year actually paid, and the word doing the work is actually: where a region rebates wealth tax to nothing, nothing is paid and nothing can be deducted, so the relief is a floor rather than a ceiling. That is what our notes on the Spanish regions where the wealthy pay no wealth tax and on the national tax built to catch the rich both turn on.
The regime helps, within limits
The order of operations is what an inspector looks at. The certificate from the departure country dates the exit, and the Social Security registration starts the six month clock on the election. Neither is hard to obtain at the time; both are hard to reconstruct later.
Spain has widened its inbound regime toward remote workers and entrepreneurs, which can suit a relocating founder, but the regime has boundaries and does not neutralize every issue a large unrealized balance sheet creates, as we set out in our note on the Beckham law. The right approach for new money is to plan the sequence of the move around any liquidity event, address the departure country and the arrival country together, get the crypto reporting right from day one, and choose an ownership and holding structure for the longer term, as in our notes on holding a Spanish home and family office structuring. Planned, Spain is an excellent base for this generation of wealth. Improvised, it is where a well-timed fortune meets badly-timed tax.
Montclare advises international individuals and families on buying, holding and moving to Spain: the structure, the tax, the residence and the succession, handled as one plan. Our services are set out on our services page.
This article is informational and does not constitute tax, legal or immigration advice. Spanish regimes vary by region and change frequently, and treatment depends on personal circumstances. Each engagement is subject to scope and applicable regulation.