Do I have to file at home while living in Spain?
Residence decides it, and residence is a question of facts rather than of where your post arrives. The one exception is US citizenship, which carries the filing obligation with the person wherever they go. So the first thing we establish is which system still claims you.
Is there a treaty between my country and Spain?
That is verified rather than assumed: we confirm which treaty text governs Spain and your home country for the year in question, because a protocol can move a rate or an article between years. If there is no treaty, unilateral credit rules are what prevent double taxation.
I own property in Spain. Where is the rent taxed?
Rent from immovable property is almost always taxable where the property is situated, frequently by withholding on the gross amount, with your home country taxing the same income and giving credit. A net-basis election, where one exists, is usually the difference between tax on profit and tax on turnover.
Am I still taxed at home if I move to Spain?
Residence decides it, not the address on your post. Spain looks at where your home, your family and your economic interests sit, and your former country runs its own test at the same time. Both can conclude you are resident, which is why the treaty tie-breaker exists: it ranks permanent home, centre of vital interests, habitual abode and nationality until one country wins. Until that question is settled and written down, everything that follows from it — which return reports what income, which country gives credit for the other's tax — is guesswork. We fix the residence position and the date it changed first, then build the filings around it.
Does my tax in Spain depend on which region I live in?
Partly, yes. The national rules set the frame, but the autonomous communities have their own room to move, so two people with identical income can face different outcomes depending on where they are registered. This bites hardest on the taxes attached to wealth, gifts and inheritances, and on the reliefs available against them, rather than on the basic shape of the income return. It also means advice that was correct for a friend in one community can be wrong for you in another. We ask which community you are registered in before saying anything about that side of the position.
I own a holiday flat in Spain but never let it. Do I file?
Very probably. Non-resident ownership of Spanish property carries its own annual filing quite apart from any income, so an empty flat is not an empty file. The obligation attaches to the ownership itself and continues year after year for as long as the title is in your name. Owners usually discover this at the point of sale, when the buyer's lawyer asks for the filing history and several years have to be dealt with at once. The orderly fix is to bring the outstanding years up to date deliberately, oldest first, rather than filing the current year and hoping the rest go unnoticed.
Which country taxes my salary if I work from Spain for a foreign employer?
Two things are decided separately: where the work is physically performed, and where you are resident. Work done on Spanish soil is generally Spain's to tax, whoever pays you and wherever the payroll sits. Your former country may still tax the same salary if it treats you as resident, and relief then comes as a credit rather than an exemption, which only works if the two filings are aligned. Employers frequently keep running the old payroll after the employee has gone, so the withholding sits in the wrong country for the whole year. That is fixable, but it is far easier fixed before the year closes than afterwards.
Do I need to report my Spanish bank accounts back home?
Assume yes and check, rather than the other way round. Most of the countries our clients come from require residents to disclose foreign accounts, foreign property and interests in foreign entities separately from the income those assets produce, and the penalties attach to the non-disclosure rather than to any tax. Holding the account in Spain does not exempt it, and neither does the income being small or nil. Where several years have already gone unreported, the route that works is a voluntary correction prepared on the full picture, not a quiet amendment of the most recent year on its own.
Why does my Spanish payslip already show tax taken off?
Spanish payroll collects as it pays, so by the time the annual return comes round much of the tax has already gone. The return is then largely a reconciliation: it confirms the year's totals, adds anything the payroll never saw, and settles the difference either way. Expats get caught by the second part — rent from a property left behind, investment income, a pension paid from abroad. None of that passes through Spanish payroll, so none of it is covered by what the payslip shows. We reconcile the payslips first and then add the outside income, and that is usually where a balance appears.
How do I report foreign employment income with no W-2?
A foreign employer does not issue one, and none is required. You report the wages from your own records — payslips, the employment contract, and the foreign tax assessment or return, which is the document a reviewer finds most persuasive — converted to your own currency. Keep the foreign filing with the return, because it is also the proof of foreign tax paid that supports the credit or the exclusion you are claiming. See a US return from abroad.
Does the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion apply to self-employment tax?
No — it does not reduce self-employment tax at all. The exclusion removes income from income tax only, so a US self-employed person abroad can exclude the profit for income-tax purposes and still owe self-employment tax on it. What can relieve that is a totalization agreement with the country where you actually work, which assigns you to one social-security system instead of both. See totalization agreements.
