You live abroad, work abroad and pay your taxes abroad. Then one day the Spanish Tax Agency tells you that you never left.
The story of many Spaniards living abroad could well have been written by Steven Spielberg. In The Terminal, Viktor Navorski lands in New York with a valid passport and discovers that, while he was in the air, a coup has wiped his country off the diplomatic map. The passport is genuine. But it is no longer any use to him. And Navorski spends months trapped in the airport, belonging nowhere.
Swap the airport for the Spanish Tax Agency. You left Spain years ago, your home and your job are in another country, you pay your taxes there and you keep a residence certificate with every stamp in place. One day a letter arrives from the tax authorities: as far as the inspectors are concerned, you never left the terminal. And they claim Spanish income tax on everything you have earned anywhere in the world.
The passport that opens no doors
The rule seems simple: anyone who spends more than 183 days a year in Spain is tax resident here. But it is not the only rule. So is anyone whose centre of economic interests is here, and the tax authorities presume residence for anyone whose spouse and children remain in Spain.
And the residence certificate from the other country? Like Navorski’s passport, it is almost never enough. It serves one very specific purpose, to stop short trips being added to the days spent in Spain, but it will not halt an inspection that maintains you were here for more than half the year, or that your life is still here.
The man who counts the days
In the film, Frank Dixon, the head of customs, watches Navorski from the control room and notes every step he takes. The tax authorities do the same with the trail we all leave behind: the credit card, the plane tickets, the electricity bill, the mobile phone. And they count generously: landing at Barajas at eleven at night already adds up to a full day in Spain.
But Dixon has a blind spot. When the inspectors place you in Madrid on a Monday and again on the Friday, they tend to take for granted that you were here from Tuesday to Thursday as well. Those are presumed days, days nobody has seen. And whoever asserts something has to prove it: if the tax authorities say you spent more than 183 days here, it is for them to prove every single one.
How to get out of the terminal
Navorski leaves the airport when he manages to prove who he is and why he has come. So will you. Keep the tickets, the boarding passes, the contracts and the invoices with the same care he took over his tin of peanuts. If the letter arrives, do not accept the tax authorities’ calendar without checking it day by day. Residence is often decided by a dozen days nobody has proved. Are you sure the taxman has counted yours correctly?