Spain Beckham Law Calculator: 24% Flat Rate vs Standard IRPF

It's the special impatriate tax regime under Art. 93 LIRPF, informally named after footballer David Beckham (an early high-profile beneficiary). Qualifying inbound workers pay a flat 24% on Spanish-source employment income up to €600,000/year (47% above that), instead of Spain's standard progressive income tax scale, for the year of arrival plus 5 more years (6 tax years total).

You must not have been a Spanish tax resident in the 5 tax years before your move (reduced from 10 years by the 2023 Startup Law). The 2023 reform also widened eligibility beyond traditional inbound assignees to include remote workers employed by a non-Spanish company, digital nomad visa holders, company directors (with shareholding caps for existing entities), and entrepreneurs or highly-qualified professionals under the Startup Law. You must apply within 6 months of registering with Spanish Social Security.

It's a genuine, ongoing debate in Spain, and it plays out exactly the way it sounds: two people can sit at neighbouring desks on the same €90,000 gross salary, and the Beckham Law beneficiary pays a flat 24% while their Spanish colleague on standard IRPF is taxed progressively up to 45% on the top slice of that same salary, purely because one of them qualifies as a recent arrival and the other doesn't. Spain's official justification is attracting skilled foreign talent and investment that wouldn't otherwise relocate. Whether that trade-off is fair to long-tenured domestic staff is a policy question we won't referee here; this tool just shows you the numbers both regimes actually produce.

Changing employer within Spain while staying an employee is generally fine and doesn't reset the clock, since the regime attaches to you as an individual taxpayer, not to a specific employer. But moving into a category the regime doesn't cover, becoming autónomo instead of an employee, for example, can disqualify you from the point that change takes effect, after which standard IRPF applies for the rest of that tax year and beyond. Confirm any status change with a gestor before it happens, not after.

Spain splits income tax into a state scale plus a regional (autonomous community) scale that varies materially by where you live. Madrid runs one of the lowest regional scales and is the most common tech-hub reference point, so it's used here as the representative "standard" case. If you're comparing an offer in Catalonia or Valencia, where regional scales run higher, Beckham Law's advantage would likely be even larger than this calculator shows.

Generally, foreign-source income (dividends, rental income, capital gains outside Spain) is exempt under the regime, only Spanish-source employment income is taxed at the flat rate. This calculator models Spanish-source salary only, the relevant case for a straight salary comparison.

Not in this calculator, it applies the same 6.50% employee Social Security rate (capped at €61,214.40/year for 2026) to both columns. In practice, some Beckham Law beneficiaries remain covered by their home country's social security system under EU coordination rules or a bilateral totalisation agreement, and may be exempt from Spanish Social Security entirely, a detail this tool doesn't model.

Beckham Law's 24%/47% flat-rate bands and the 6.50% capped employee Social Security rate are current for 2026. The standard IRPF comparison uses the combined state + Madrid autonomous-community scale and doesn't include the mínimo personal y familiar (personal/family tax-free allowance) or other deductions, so actual standard-regime take-home will differ somewhat, and won't reflect any other region's scale. For your exact eligibility and figures, confirm with a gestor or Spanish tax adviser.