Spain exit tax (Article 95 bis): who actually pays it
Spain's Article 95 bis exit tax — the €4M and 25% thresholds, the 10-of-15-years test, the real effective rate, and why most leavers owe nothing.
Most people searching for “Spain exit tax” do not owe it.
Article 95 bis of the Spanish IRPF Law is real, and for the founders it catches it is a large number that has to be planned around months in advance. But it was written to catch a specific and narrow population — long-tenured Spanish residents with substantial equity — and the thresholds exclude the overwhelming majority of freelancers, remote employees, creators and small-company founders who leave Spain every year.
This page is the drilldown on the tax itself: what triggers it, what it costs, who is exempt, and what can still be done before the departure date. For the full departure sequence — Modelo 030, the RETA baja, the 183-day tests — see how to leave Spain tax residency.
What Article 95 bis actually taxes
An exit tax is not a fee for leaving. It is a deemed disposal: the tax authority pretends you sold your shares on the day you stopped being resident, calculates the gain you would have made, and taxes that gain — even though no money changed hands and you still own the shares.
Spain’s version taxes only unrealised gains on shareholdings in corporations. It does not touch:
- Salary, freelance or professional income
- Real estate (that has its own non-resident regime)
- Cash, deposits or bond holdings
- Pension rights
- Crypto held directly rather than through a company
That last exclusion surprises people. Article 95 bis is written around valores — shares and participations — so a directly-held crypto portfolio is outside its scope. The Spain crypto exit checklist covers what does apply in that case.
The three conditions — all must be true
| # | Condition | Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spanish tax residency history | Resident in at least 10 of the previous 15 years |
| 2 | Cessation of residency | You stop being Spanish tax resident |
| 3 | Shareholding size (either test) | Total shares > €4,000,000, or ≥ 25% of a company worth > €1,000,000 |
The structure matters more than the numbers. These are cumulative — conditions 1 and 2 and 3 must all hold. Miss any one and the article does not apply.
Condition 1 is the one that quietly exempts most of the people who worry about this. Spain has been a destination for inbound remote workers and Beckham-Law arrivals for years; someone who moved to Valencia in 2021 and leaves in 2026 has five resident years, not ten, and Article 95 bis simply cannot reach them.
Condition 3 contains two independent tests, and founders routinely misread it. The €4M test is measured across your whole portfolio, aggregated. The 25% test applies per company and has a much lower floor. A founder holding 100% of a company worth €1.2M is caught by the second test while being nowhere near €4M.
What it costs
The deemed gain is taxed on the savings income scale, not the general income scale. In 2026 that scale runs 19% to 30%, with the top band applying above €300,000.
Because the top band starts at a relatively low figure, any substantial deemed gain sits close to 30% overall. Worked through the bands, a €2,000,000 deemed gain:
| Band | Amount taxed | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| €0 – €6,000 | €6,000 | 19% | €1,140 |
| €6,000 – €50,000 | €44,000 | 21% | €9,240 |
| €50,000 – €200,000 | €150,000 | 23% | €34,500 |
| €200,000 – €300,000 | €100,000 | 27% | €27,000 |
| Above €300,000 | €1,700,000 | 30% | €510,000 |
| Total | €2,000,000 | — | ≈ €581,880 |
That is an effective rate of 29.1%. The lesson in that table: for gains in the millions, the progressive bands are rounding error. Model large exposures at roughly 30% and you will be within a percent of the real number.
Three profiles, same rules:
| Profile | Qualifying shares | Article 95 bis? | Approx. charge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer, €140k/yr invoiced, 12 years resident | None | No — condition 3 fails | €0 |
| Founder, 100% of a €1.2M company, 14 years resident | 100% of >€1M company | Yes — 25% test | ~€341k on a €1.197M gain |
| Employee relocated to Madrid in 2022, €5M listed portfolio | >€4M | No — condition 1 fails | €0 |
The middle row is the case people underestimate, and the bottom row is the case people overestimate.
Deferral and special regimes
Article 95 bis contains relief mechanisms — deferral routes tied to the destination country and to temporary work postings, with the charge unwound if you resume Spanish residency within a defined window. The mechanics differ materially depending on whether the destination is inside the EU/EEA, and Thailand and Paraguay are both outside it.
These provisions are genuinely intricate and the qualifying conditions are fact-specific. We deliberately do not publish a simplified version, because a simplified version of a deferral rule is how people end up with an unexpected assessment. If your situation crosses the thresholds above, the deferral analysis belongs with Spanish tax counsel before the departure date — it is the first thing we put on the agenda for members in this position.
Timing is the whole game
Article 95 bis crystallises on the date Spanish tax residency ends. Everything that can change the outcome has to happen before that date.
This is not a tax you can plan around retroactively. Once residency has ceased, the deemed disposal has occurred, the gain is fixed at that day’s market value, and no subsequent restructuring undoes it. Founders who discover the article after landing in Bangkok have discovered it too late.
The legitimate levers, all pre-departure:
- Staging across tax years. Sometimes the right answer is to remain Spanish resident for one more calendar year while the structure is rebuilt, then exit cleanly. One extra year of Spanish tax can be far cheaper than a mishandled deemed disposal.
- Valuation discipline. The charge is based on market value at the residency-end date. A defensible, documented valuation is a materially different position from an aggressive one that invites challenge four years later.
- Pre-move restructuring. Moving the holding into a different structure before the trigger fires. This is legitimate when done with counsel and well ahead of the date; Spain’s anti-abuse provisions catch arrangements assembled hastily at the exit.
The pattern is identical to Germany’s, where §6 AStG Wegzugsteuer fires on the same all-or-nothing basis, and to the Dutch conserverende aanslag — which is stricter still, because it applies no minimum-residency condition at all. For the cross-border comparison across all eight jurisdictions we run exits in, see the EU exit tax cheatsheet.
What most readers should actually do
If you have no qualifying shareholding, or fewer than ten resident years in the last fifteen, Article 95 bis is not your problem. Your Spanish exit is a paperwork sequence — Modelo 030, the activity baja, the RETA deregistration, the final partial-year IRPF return — and it is covered end to end in the leaving Spain guide.
If you do cross the thresholds, the number is large enough that the planning has to start before the departure date, not after. Run the Thailand tax calculator to see what the destination side looks like, compare the Thailand vs Spain position, and then book the diagnosis call — on that call we tell you which of the three conditions you actually meet and what the realistic exposure is.
Most of those calls end with the answer: it does not apply to you. That is a useful thing to know for certain rather than to assume.
CERØ handles the DTV visa, Thai tax residency setup and your home-country exit — end to end. Talk to the team about your specific numbers.
CERØ handles the cédula, Paraguayan tax setup and your EU exit — from paperwork to touchdown. Talk to the team about whether Paraguay fits your structure.