Moving from the Netherlands to Spain

No visa, and that is the whole visa section

Both countries are in the EU. If you hold the nationality of an EU or EEA state you move under free movement: no work permit, no salary threshold, no sponsor. None of the numbers that dominate our other corridors apply to you here.

That is also why this site has no Spanish visa page. For non-EU nationals Spain sets the bar for its Highly Qualified Professional route through the criteria of the Unidad de Grandes Empresas rather than in the law itself, and we have not found a published figure we would stand behind. We would rather leave the page out than print a number we cannot source.

The five-year condition works in your favour on this route

The Spanish regime — article 93 of Ley 35/2006, the one everyone calls the Beckham Law — requires that you were not resident in Spain for the five tax years before the year you move. Someone who has been living and working in the Netherlands clears that by definition, unless they were in Spain earlier in that window.

This is the mirror image of the Dutch 150 km rule, which catches people arriving from just over the border. Read them together: the Dutch scheme asks where you were, the Spanish scheme asks where you were not.

Both regimes are time-boxed, and the clocks do not join up

The Dutch exemption runs up to five years and ends when you stop being employed in the Netherlands. The Spanish regime covers the year you change residence plus the five following tax years. Time already spent under the Dutch ruling does not shorten the Spanish one — but it does not extend anything either. Two separate windows, each with its own start.

The shape of the tax bill changes completely

Under the Spanish regime you are taxed at a flat 24% on employment income up to €600,000. Above that ceiling the rate becomes 47% — the ceiling switches the rate, it does not end the regime, which is a distinction worth getting right if you are near it.

The Netherlands is progressive: 35.75% inside the first band from the first euro, with credits applied afterwards, and 49.5% above €78,426. So the Spanish flat rate sits below the Dutch entry rate at every income level, before either regime is applied.

The comparison you actually need is different, though. If the 30% ruling applied to your Dutch salary, part of your pay was untaxed, so compare the Spanish 24% against your Dutch effective rate with the exemption — not against 35.75%.

Two things the law itself excludes

Professional sportspeople are written out of the Spanish regime by the statute, despite the nickname it carries. And regional income tax is not covered by anything on this page: ordinary Spanish IRPF is the sum of a state scale and the scale of the autonomous community you live in, so the total depends on where in Spain you land. The Beckham regime replaces that calculation while it lasts — which is precisely why we publish the regime and not a Spanish salary page.