Cuéntamo Blog

How Long You Can Carry Forward VAT to Offset Before You Lose It

September 11, 2026

You’ve been carrying a VAT balance to offset in box 110 of your modelo 303 for two or three years now. Every quarter you enter it, and every quarter it’s still there, a bit bigger or a bit smaller depending on how the business is going. You’ve never requested the refund, partly because nobody has told you there’s any rush. Is there?

The short answer is yes, although probably not in the way you’re worried about. The money doesn’t just vanish overnight. What has an expiry date is the mechanism you’re using to recover it: offsetting it quarter after quarter. Once that date passes you have to switch to a different route, and if you don’t know that, you can end up with neither.

The 24-hour rule against impulse buying

September 11, 2026

You see something, want it right now, and buy it on the spot, usually from your phone. Two days later you can’t even remember what made it so appealing, or worse: it arrives home and sits unused in the closet. It’s not that you have bad judgment — you’re deciding with the part of your brain that reacts to the moment, not the one that thinks a few weeks ahead.

Company-director autónomos in 2026: the €1,424 minimum base, provisional contributions and the settlement coming later

September 10, 2026

If you are the managing director of a Spanish limited company (sociedad limitada) and contribute to the Spanish self-employed social security regime (RETA), you may have spent all of 2026 paying a monthly contribution that does not match what the law has required since January. That is not a mistake on your part: Social Security allows a provisional contribution during the year. But when the year closes, the bill arrives. This article explains what changed, why, how much the difference could be and what you can do before December.

How a Spanish Autónomo's State Pension Is Calculated in 2026, Step by Step

September 8, 2026

An easy question to ask and a hard one to answer: if you have spent years contributing on a base of 1,200 euros a month, how much pension will you get? The answer, assuming you have contributed enough years, is 1,028.57 euros a month across fourteen payments. And that is not an arbitrary number: it comes out of a public formula you can work through yourself with pen and paper.

Index Fund or ETF: Why the Fund Usually Wins in Spain (and the Condition Almost Nobody Checks)

September 8, 2026

If you’ve read anything about passive investing, you’ve probably come across this idea: an index fund and an ETF tracking the same index are, in practice, the same product with a different wrapper. Similar fees, same diversification, same “don’t try to beat the market” philosophy. And up to that point, it’s true.

What almost nobody spells out with the same detail is that, in Spain, they’re not taxed the same at all. One lets you move your money from one place to another without paying tax along the way. The other doesn’t. And the advantage of the first one is only real if a very specific condition is met, one that most people don’t even know exists, let alone check.

Modelo 349: Spain's EU Operations Return, and Why Buying Google or Meta Ads Counts

September 7, 2026

You run a Google Ads campaign, place a few Meta ads, or rent a server on AWS. These are such routine expenses that you barely think about them: the charge lands, you log it, and you move on. What you probably don’t know is that, the moment you pay that invoice, you’ve just carried out an “intra-community operation” under Spanish VAT law. And that brings two formal obligations almost no digital autónomo (self-employed worker) has ever heard of: registering in a census called the ROI, and periodically filing a form called modelo 349.

Does It Pay to Move to Another Region as a Digital Freelancer in Spain? The Numbers, for Real

September 4, 2026

If your work runs entirely off a laptop, this has probably happened to you: a fellow freelancer, billing roughly what you bill, mentions what they actually keep at year’s end, and the number doesn’t match yours. Same work, sometimes even the same clients, and a real gap in what each of you takes home. The explanation is almost always the same one: you live in different Spanish regions, and that changes what you pay in income tax on the same money.

Modelo 390: What Spain's Annual VAT Summary Is and How It Ties to Your Quarterly Returns

August 28, 2026

Four quarterly modelo 303 returns, four payments to the Agencia Tributaria, and then at the end of the tax year comes one more declaration: the modelo 390. For many autónomos (self-employed workers) this is the one that generates the most questions — not because it’s complicated, but because it’s not clear what it’s actually for if you’ve already filed all four 303s for the year.

The short answer: the 390 is not a new tax payment. It’s the year-end close. The document that says “here’s everything I charged, everything I paid, and everything I’ve settled with the tax authority over the year, added up”. It’s also your last chance to spot anything in the quarterly returns that doesn’t add up.

Pay yourself first: how to automate your savings and make them grow

August 27, 2026

You get paid, cover the usual bills, and at the end of the month you look at whatever’s left to “save.” Most months there isn’t much, and some months there’s nothing. You promise yourself you’ll do better next month, it lasts two weeks, a rough month shows up and the resolution quietly fades without you ever deciding to give up.

The problem isn’t that you earn too little, or spend badly, or lack character. It’s the order. If savings go last in line, they lose to whatever expense shows up first. And if they depend on you deciding to set money aside every single month, they also lose to every bad month.

Deducting the car, the phone and the home as a freelancer: what the tax office accepts (and what it doesn't)

August 25, 2026

Some freelance expenses raise no doubt at all: office supplies, the software you use every day, your accountant. Then there are the car, the phone and the home, which happen to be the things you use for everything: for work and for life. That’s where almost every freelancer hesitates, and where the two opposite mistakes happen: deducting nothing out of fear, or deducting too much without realizing you’re taking on a real risk.