Deductible Expenses

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.

A till receipt is not an invoice: when you can deduct it and when you can't

August 24, 2026

You have lunch with a client, pay 48 euros and tuck the receipt into your wallet with a sense of duty done. Three months later, doing your quarterly return, that crumpled piece of paper is worth rather less than you thought: you can deduct the expense, but not the VAT. And not because the receipt is faulty, but because it’s missing one line you can only ask for at the moment you pay.

Renting out a flat in Spain: what you really pay, and the expenses almost nobody claims

August 13, 2026

Renting out a flat looks like the easy part: you sign the contract, you collect every month, and that’s it. The complicated bit shows up in the tax return, and almost always for two opposite reasons: many people assume that money is taxed lightly (it’s taxed at their highest rate) while at the same time leaving out expenses the law grants them, starting with the biggest one of all, which doesn’t cost them a euro a year.

Depreciation for autónomos: what it is, the official tables and worked examples

May 20, 2026

You’ve just bought a 2,000-euro laptop for your work as an autónomo (self-employed worker). You have the invoice, the IVA (VAT) is clear, and you assume you’ll deduct the whole thing this year like any other expense. But no: that laptop is a capital asset, and for tax purposes it doesn’t work like that.

What you have to do is depreciate it. Spread its cost over several years, following the tables published by the Spanish Tax Agency (Agencia Tributaria). The concept isn’t complicated, but it has its nuances. Let’s break them down.

Deductible expenses for the self-employed under simplified direct assessment: the complete list

April 30, 2026

One of the advantages of being self-employed (autónomo) compared with an employee is that you can deduct the expenses necessary to carry out your activity before being taxed. That reduces the taxable base and, therefore, what you pay in IRPF (Spanish personal income tax).

But “expenses necessary for the activity” has a specific definition in tax law, and not everything that might seem deductible actually is. This guide gathers the most common deductible expenses under simplified direct assessment (estimación directa simplificada), with the nuances worth knowing.