Spain Exit Tax: Who Pays, Thresholds and How to Defer It

The Spain exit tax charges you on gains in your shares that you haven’t realised, simply because you stop being a Spanish tax resident. It only bites if you’ve been resident for at least 10 of the last 15 years and your shares are worth more than €4 million in total, or you own more than 25% of a company worth more than €1 million to you.

Spain calls it the régimen especial de ganancias patrimoniales por cambio de residencia, set out in Article 95 bis of the income tax law. The Agencia Tributaria treats the paper gain as if you’d sold everything on your last day as a resident, then adds it to your last Spanish return. No sale, no cash, and still a bill at rates of up to 30%.

Most people who leave Spain never meet it. The ones who do are usually founders and family-business owners whose wealth is tied up in one company they’ve never valued. If that’s you, the order in which you do things matters more than where you end up.

Who Pays the Spain Exit Tax?

You pay it only if three things are true at once: you lose Spanish tax residence because you move abroad, you were a Spanish tax resident for at least 10 of the 15 tax years before your last year of residence, and your shareholdings cross one of the two value thresholds on the last day of that final year.

The residence test comes from Article 9 of the income tax law. You’re resident if you spend more than 183 days a year in Spain, if your main business or economic interests are based there, or (a presumption you can rebut) if your spouse and dependent minor children live there. Leaving means breaking all three, which is why we tell clients to plan the family’s move and the business’s centre of gravity together. Our guide to the tax residency certificate covers how to prove the new residence once you have it.

Years spent under the special regime for workers posted to Spain (the Beckham Law) don’t count toward the 10. The clock starts in the first year that regime no longer applies, so someone who arrived on it in 2016 and came off it in 2022 has a long way to go before the exit tax can touch them. If you’re still on your way in, check how many of your years were spent on that regime before you count.

The Spain Exit Tax Threshold: €4 Million or 25%

The Spain exit tax threshold has two limbs. It applies if the market value of all your shares and fund units together exceeds €4,000,000. If you’re under that, it still applies to any company where you hold more than 25% and that stake is worth more than €1,000,000, but only to those specific holdings.

Note what’s missing from the list. Property, cash, bonds, crypto and pension rights aren’t in scope. The rule targets “shares or participations of any type of entity”, plus units in collective investment funds, which the Agencia Tributaria values at their net asset value.

The 25% limb catches people who think they’re safe. Each stake is tested on its own, though. Three 30% holdings worth €900,000 apiece add up to €2.7 million and none of them crosses €1 million, so none of them is caught.

How Spain Values Your Shares for the Exit Tax

Listed shares are valued at their market price. Fund units go in at net asset value. Unlisted companies are where the surprises come from.

For an unlisted company, the Agencia Tributaria takes the higher of two figures, unless you can prove a different market value: the net equity in the last balance sheet closed before the valuation date, or the average profit of the last three closed financial years capitalised at 20%. Capitalising at 20% means multiplying average profit by five. Dividends paid out and transfers to reserves count as profit for this purpose.

This is where people get burned. A trading company with modest book equity and steady profits of €900,000 a year gets valued at €4.5 million under the formula, which is already over the threshold, before anyone has asked what a buyer would actually pay. We’ve seen owners who assumed they were nowhere near €4 million discover they were over it the week they ran the numbers.

How Much Is the Spain Exit Tax?

The exit tax is charged at Spain’s savings income rates, which since 2025 run from 19% on the first €6,000 of gain up to 30% on anything above €300,000. On a large gain the effective rate gets close to 30%. The gain goes onto a supplementary return for your last year of residence, with no late-payment interest, surcharge or penalty.

The state half of that scale (9.5% to 15%) was raised by Law 7/2024 from 1 January 2025, and the regional half was changed in the same terms. Read the top band twice: 30% on a sale you never made.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. These are illustrative calculations on the official scale, and none of them is a client case.

The timing works like this. Say you move in early 2026 and spend fewer than 183 days in Spain that year. Your last year of residence is 2025, your shares are valued at 31 December 2025, and the supplementary return for 2025 is due in the normal filing window for 2026, which runs in spring 2027. The Agencia Tributaria’s 2025 return puts these gains in section F4.

Spain Exit Tax EU Rule: Moving Within the EU or EEA

If you move to another EU or EEA country that exchanges tax information effectively with Spain, you can opt for a special regime. Under it, the tax is only collected if, within 10 years, you sell or give away the shares, stop being resident in an EU or EEA state, or fail to tell the Agencia Tributaria what it needs to know.

The notice goes on Form 113 (Modelo 113), which can only be filed electronically with a Spanish digital certificate or electronic ID. Form 113 was approved by Order HAP/2835/2015. Miss the communication and you’ve handed Spain one of the three triggers on a plate.

In practice this is the cleanest route for most of the people who ask us about leaving. Someone moving to Portugal, where the Portugal residency routes and the IFICI regime can bring an entrepreneur’s tax under 10%, or to Italy or Cyprus, files Form 113 and pays nothing on departure. The catch is the 10-year leash. Sell the company in year six, or move on from Lisbon to Dubai in year eight, and the bill comes due.

Spain Exit Tax Deferral for Temporary Moves

You can ask to defer payment if your move is temporary. Deferral is available when you move for work to a country that isn’t on Spain’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions, or for any other reason to a country with a tax treaty with Spain that includes an exchange-of-information clause. The standard deferral runs five years.

Deferral comes with the usual conditions for postponing a tax debt, which means interest and security. If you come back and become a Spanish taxpayer again within the period without having sold the shares, the deferred debt is extinguished along with the interest. For work-related moves you can ask for up to five more years if the reasons justify it, giving a maximum of 10.

Already paid and moved back? If you become a Spanish taxpayer again without having transferred the shares, you can file a corrected return and claim back what you paid, with late-payment interest running in your favour from the date you paid.

Moving to a Tax Haven on Spain’s List

Spain keeps its own list of non-cooperative jurisdictions, and Spanish nationals who move to one don’t lose Spanish taxpayer status at all. Article 8.2 of the income tax law keeps them inside the Spanish net for the year they move and the four years that follow. The exit tax has its own special rules for this case.

The list changed this year. Order HAC/649/2026, in force from 28 June 2026, took Barbados, Dominica, Gibraltar, Samoa, Seychelles and Trinidad and Tobago off it, and adds Russia (for its international holding company regime only) from six months after that date. Jurisdictions still listed include Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Bahrain, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Gibraltar coming off the list matters for anyone weighing Gibraltar residency and its Category 2 tax cap as an exit from Spain. Andorra, Monaco and the UAE aren’t on the current list either. Check the list at the date you move, since Spain amends it by ministerial order.

Where You Move Decides Which Exit Tax Rules Apply

We built this table because no single official page lays it out by destination. It reflects the rules above and Spain’s non-cooperative list as updated in June 2026.

Popular non-EU choices such as Andorra residency and UAE residency fall in the second or third row, depending on whether the move is permanent and why you’re going. For a permanent move, budget for the tax on departure.

Common Mistakes With the Spain Exit Tax

• Assuming book value is the value. The 20% capitalisation rule often puts a profitable private company well above its balance sheet.
• Forgetting the stake test. One 30% holding worth €1.2 million is enough, even with nothing else.
• Treating the EU route as an exemption. It’s a 10-year conditional pass. A sale, a gift or a move out of the bloc ends it.
• Leaving the family behind. A spouse and minor children in Spain create a presumption that you’re still resident, and the exit tax is the least of the problems that follow.
• Leaving it to the last month. The valuation date is fixed by your last resident year. Restructuring after that date doesn’t change the number.

Spain isn’t alone in taxing people for leaving. Our pieces on the EU exit tax push show where Brussels wants to take this next, and why the window for a clean departure tends to narrow over time.

Spain Exit Tax FAQ

Final Thoughts on the Spain Exit Tax

Spain’s exit tax is narrow, and it’s expensive for the people it hits. If you’re near the 10-year mark or near the €4 million line, the planning happens before you leave, because the valuation date locks in the year you go. Run the Spanish valuation, choose the destination regime on purpose, and file the paperwork on time. If you’d like us to map the move with you, book a strategy call and we’ll work through it with your numbers.