Forming a company in Spain is more complex than in many other European countries. This is mainly because Spain still uses the Notarial system for legalisation of private and public transactions, including purchasing a property.
Therefore, in order to form a limited company (sociedad limitada) in Spain, it is necessary for the shareholders and directors of the company to go to a Spanish Notary to sign the Deed of Constitution. This is only one of the steps necessary to complete the company formation, which includes submitting forms to the Tax Office and finally lodging all of these forms and the company Deed at the Mercantile Registry, who take around a month to finally register the company. So at the end of the day, this process ends up being long, frustrating and also costly for the client. For this reason, in recent years we have not offered full Spanish company formation to our clients.
Recently the authorities have introduced a new online One Stop Shop (CIRCE) for procedures which include company formation. Our experience of forming a company through this system has not been good, due to the fact that a Notary visit is difficult for a Notary, who is a typical Spanish public servant with not much will or necessity to adapt or be flexible, to be part of this online procedure. So we are not recommending the CIRCE system for company formation in Spain.
For an individual, whether they are resident or not in Spain, who would like to form a Spanish limited company, there is a simple alternative, which is a registering as self-employed, autonomo. From a tax point of view, the director may not be at a disadvantage using this route. Company tax is Spain is currently 25%. A non-resident individual operating as autonomo pays either 19% (EU residents) or 24% (non-EU residents) on their Spanish profits, so there is a clear tax saving there, subject to any unmitigated international double taxation.
For residents, the company director-shareholder is going to subject to Spanish income tax on dividends and salaries taken from a company. You can find the latest rates on our website. There is also no dividend double tax credit which means that there is double taxation if the profits are paid out via dividends. Sure, for higher company profits the income tax bands go to a lot higher than the 25% company tax rate. But remember that any money that the director draws from the company for their personal use as a salary will also be taxed at income tax rates.
So really we would be recommending Spanish company formation for residents in the circumstance where the company profits are guaranteed to be, say, at least 50,000 Euros a year, and/or there are going to be multiple shareholders involved in the business. If you are an individual business person just starting off in Spain, when it is very possible that you may make a trading loss or small profit in your first years, it would be much better for you to register as autonomo. It is always possible to move to a full company at a later date once your business and earnings are established.
Note that whether you operate in Spain via a limited company or as autonomo , you will be required to pay monthly Social Security contributions which are a fixed rate and do not depend on the actual profit that your business makes. This also applies to you if you are non resident and will never gain any benefit from the Spanish Social Security system !
In all cases you will be need to open a Spanish company bank account, because the Tax and Social Security offices only accept direct debit payments from Spanish bank accounts.
You can find full details about registering as an autonomo and how we can help you on our website. Registration is online via the CIRCE system and is normally complete within a 2-3 working days.
As always, feel free to contact us if you have any queries and we will get back to you as soon as possible.