Self-Employed

Modelo 111 and Modelo 190: When You Have to File the Withholdings You Make

October 16, 2026

Whether you know about withholding depends a lot on who you invoice. If you’re a professional and your clients are Spanish companies or autónomos (self-employed workers), you see it on every invoice: the client deducts 15% of IRPF (personal income tax) and pays it in to Hacienda in your name. If you invoice clients abroad or private individuals, or your activity is a business one (a shop, a workshop), you can spend years as an autónomo without ever seeing a withholding.

Does What You Pay Each Quarter in Modelo 130 Come Back in Your Tax Return? How the Two Cross, With Numbers

October 14, 2026

Invoicing a client in the United States (or outside the EU): neither «exempt» nor «no VAT, end of story»

October 9, 2026

You have a client in the United States, Canada or the UK and it’s time to issue the invoice. The usual doubt arrives: do I charge VAT? And the second one, the one that ends badly: what do I write where the VAT would go? Two categorical answers circulate in forums, and both are wrong. One says the transaction is «exempt». The other says that outside the EU «no VAT applies, ever».

Got box 110 of the Spanish VAT return wrong? How to fix it since 2024 (no more complementaria or rectificación)

October 4, 2026

You filed this quarter’s modelo 303, and two weeks later you realise box 110 –the VAT-to-offset balance you were carrying forward– wasn’t the right one. You put in too much, too little, or forgot it entirely. You search for how to fix it and find articles talking about filing a “complementaria” or asking for a “rectificación”, and you’re not sure which one applies to you.

You requested your Q4 VAT refund in Spain: how long the Tax Agency has to pay, and what happens if it's late

October 3, 2026

How much a self-employed worker in Spain needs to bill to take home €2,000 a month (and why every website gives you a different number)

September 30, 2026

Note: the example in this article is a hypothetical profile (a service professional working from home, under simplified direct estimation), not a real person. It’s here so you can follow the sums step by step with the official contribution and tax figures in force.

Search “how much do I need to bill to take home 2,000 euros” and you’ll find half a dozen calculators giving you half a dozen different numbers: some talk about just under 3,000 euros a month, others around 3,500, others over 4,000 once VAT is thrown into the mix. For the same target. None of them is lying, but almost none of them says what it’s actually measuring.

The VAT you paid on business expenses in the EU — Spain can get it back for you, but only until September 30

September 23, 2026

Say you went to a trade fair in Germany last year. You paid for the hotel, the food, the fuel on the way there, and the entry fee — all with invoices you kept. Hidden inside those invoices is German VAT (Mehrwertsteuer, their equivalent of IVA) that you are legally entitled to claim back. But there is a deadline to do it, and it falls on September 30.

The same applies to the conference in Paris, the client visit in Lisbon, the accommodation in Milan, or the Italian motorway tolls. If you are self-employed and you had business expenses in EU countries last year, there is a refund you may be owed — and most people who qualify never ask for it.

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.

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.

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.