🇪🇸Modelo 149: Application for Beckham Law Regime

Spain's Article 93 IRPF regime, known as the Beckham Law, lets a qualifying newcomer be taxed broadly as a non-resident: a flat 24% on employment income up to €600,000, applied for the year of arrival plus the following five. Modelo 149 is the form that claims it. Filing the form does not by itself secure the regime; it records the option, starts the clock, and links the claim to the documents that justify it.

Concept

Modelo 149 is the electronic communication to the Agencia Tributaria used by displaced workers, professionals, entrepreneurs and investors to exercise the option for the Article 93 regime, to waive it, to record an exclusion, or to report the end of displacement. It does not calculate tax and does not replace the annual return, which is filed separately on Modelo 151: it registers that the taxpayer asks to apply the special regime, under which they stay an IRPF taxpayer but are charged under IRNR rules with the specifics of Article 93.

The Agencia Tributaria indicates that before filing Modelo 149, documents must be submitted through a separate electronic service "Aportar documentación necesaria para optar por el régimen especial," and the registration number of that submission is then indicated in Modelo 149 itself.

What the regime gives

The headline is a flat 24% rate on employment income up to €600,000 a year, with income above that band taxed at 47%. Rather than the progressive IRPF scale that climbs toward the high forties for ordinary residents, an impatriate is taxed under non-resident rules: Spanish-source income at flat rates, with most foreign investment income left outside the Spanish base. For wealth tax, the person is treated as a non-resident and pays only on assets located in Spain — and so does not file the Modelo 720 informational return on foreign assets that ordinary residents must submit.

The regime runs for six tax years: the year residency is acquired and the next five. Employment income is the one category pulled fully into Spain, so salary earned anywhere during the period is generally taxable here; the treatment of work physically performed abroad is contested and worth checking case by case. Each of those years is declared on Modelo 151, the annual return downstream of the option taken on Modelo 149.

Who can opt in

The gateway condition is that the person was not a Spanish tax resident in the five tax years before relocation. The move also has to rest on a qualifying cause: an employment contract or a posting to Spain, taking up a director role in a Spanish company, a highly qualified professional or entrepreneurial activity backed by a favourable ENISA report, or remote work for a foreign employer.

The 2022 Startups Law (Ley 28/2022) widened the door from 2023: it cut the prior non-residence test from ten years to five, brought in digital nomads, entrepreneurs and highly qualified professionals, and extended the regime to the applicant's spouse and children under 25. A short-lived 2024 decree proposed further changes but was repealed in January 2025, leaving these rules in place.

Deadline

The general deadline is six months from the start of activity. That start date is the one shown in the Spanish social security registration, in the certificate retaining the home country's social security cover, or, where no social security registration is required, in another document evidencing when the activity began.

If the taxpayer completes their relocation to Spain but retains Spanish tax residency in the relevant year, this is also reported through Modelo 149 within one month of such circumstance. The purpose of the notification is to separate income from activity after completion of relocation from income considered received during the application of the regime.

Who Files

The communication is filed individually by each taxpayer. If family members request the regime, the communication of the main taxpayer is filed before the communications of related taxpayers.

To file, a Spanish tax identification number (NIF) and inclusion in the Censo de Obligados Tributarios are required. If the taxpayer is not yet included in this register, the corresponding registration declaration must be filed first.

Documentary Logic

The composition of documents depends on the basis for entering the regime. In the case of an employment contract, the Agencia Tributaria describes a document from the employer acknowledging the employment or statutory relationship, the date of commencement of activity, the work center, and the term of the contract. For remote work for a foreign employer, documents linking the relocation to remote work through information, telematic, and telecommunication means are relevant. For entrepreneurial activity and highly qualified services, specialized confirmations are added, including an ENISA opinion or company status, if required by the specific basis.

Scope of the Form

Filing Modelo 149 does not by itself prove entitlement. It records the option and ties it to a documentary basis; the substance is tested against Article 93 LIRPF and Articles 113 to 120 of the IRPF Regulation, against the fact of tax residency, the reason for relocation, the nature of the activity, and the absence of a prohibited permanent establishment.

How the pieces fit

In practice the steps run in a fixed order. First the person needs a NIF and an entry in the Censo de Obligados Tributarios. Then the supporting documents go in through the dedicated AEAT service, which returns a registration number. That number is carried onto Modelo 149, which must reach the tax office within six months of the start of activity. From the first year onward the regime is settled annually on Modelo 151, and where a household applies together, the principal taxpayer files before the related taxpayers.

Waiver (renuncia) and exclusion (exclusión) are handled through the same form — the timing and effects are covered in the note on exiting the Beckham regime.

Primary Sources

• BOE — Ley 35/2006 LIRPF, Art. 93 (displaced workers regime)

Agencia Tributaria — Modelo 149 (option, waiver, exclusion) and its filing deadline, the procedure for submitting the required documentation, and Article 93 of the IRPF Law in the BOE.

Filing checklist

• Get the NIF and the Censo de Obligados Tributarios entry in place first; without them the option cannot be filed.
• Upload the supporting documents through the dedicated AEAT service before the form, then carry the resulting registration number onto Modelo 149.
• Treat six months from the start of activity as a hard deadline, and have the principal taxpayer file before the rest of the household.
• Once the option is accepted, report the regime each year on Modelo 151, not on Modelo 149.