How to calculate autónomo Taxes in Spain

If you’re self-employed in Spain, you pay three main things: Income Tax (IRPF), VAT (IVA), and Social Security contributions (cuota de autónomo, under the RETA regime). None of them are optional, but once you understand how each one works, calculating what you owe becomes a simple, repeatable process.

This guide breaks down, step by step, how to calculate your autónomo taxes in Spain, so you can use it as your own autónomo tax calculator reference before running the real numbers.

 

Spain freelance tax calculator

 

In order to calculate your taxes as a freelancer, we first must understand the different taxes you will face.

• As we briefly introduced above, self-employed workers in Spain pay three main taxes: the income tax, also known as IRPF, the VAT (IVA) and specific social security contributions under the RETA (Régimen Especial de Trabajadores Autónomos) that act as the “cuota de autónomos”.
• Moreover, depending on your situation as a self-employed worker, you may need to pay another tax. This is when you have a Limited Society (Sociedad Limitada) instead of operating as an individual autónomo. In that case, (when you have an SL or Sociedad Limitada), your company pays Impuesto de Sociedades, typically a flat 25%. But there are some exceptions.

Under the 2024 corporate tax reform (Ley 7/2024), most small companies pay far less in 2026: 19% on the first €50,000 of taxable profit and 21% on the rest if your annual turnover is under €1 million (micropyme), or a flat 23% if your turnover is between €1 and €10 million (empresa de reducida dimensión, ERD).

Startups meeting the requirements of Ley 28/2022 (“Ley de Startups”) pay just 15% in their first two profitable years. The general 25% rate is reserved for companies that don’t qualify for these reduced regimes, typically due to size or activity.

For the main taxes, there are established percentages, which we will be explaining in this post.

However, it is true that although having fixed percentages, this can change depending on your situation, the legislation, or external factors that make it very difficult to calculate them perfectly (like the different deductions and bonifications that may apply to your particular case).

That’s where you may need experts to help you calculate how much you will have to pay.

To avoid any problems with the Agencia Tributaria (Hacienda), we strongly recommend that you get in touch with an expert tax laywer so that you get the right help to navigate the complex process to double-check your numbers and make sure you do not end up paying extra.

 

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Spain self-employed tax breakdown: What you need to pay

 

As an autónomo, you have to pay 3 main taxes:

 

As we’ll see now, you calculate your income tax based on your net profit (income minus deductible expenses), not on what you invoice.

This is the single most important thing to understand: your tax bill is based on what you actually earn after costs, not your gross revenue.

 

Income Tax (IRPF)

 

IRPF is a progressive tax on your profit. It works in two ways depending on the situation:

1. Quarterly payments on account (Modelo 130). Every quarter, you calculate your accumulated profit for the year so far and pay 20% of it to the Agencia Tributaria, minus what you’ve already paid in previous quarters. This is an advance payment, not the final tax.

2. Withholding on invoices (retención). If you invoice other businesses or professionals (not private individuals), you must include a 15% IRPF withholding on your invoice (7% for your first three years as autónomo). Your client pays this amount directly to the Agencia Tributaria on your behalf, and it counts toward your final tax bill.

3. The annual declaration (Modelo 100 “Renta”). In your yearly income tax return (April–June), your total profit is taxed according to progressive brackets.

The exact rate depends on your total taxable income and your region of residence, since part of IRPF is set by the national government and part by your autonomous community.

The combined state + regional rates run from around 19% on the lowest bracket up to 47% or even higher percentages on income above €300,000, with several brackets in between.

Whatever you’ve already paid through quarterly Modelo 130 payments and invoice withholdings gets subtracted from your final bill. If you’ve overpaid, you get a refund; if you’ve underpaid, you pay the difference.

 

VAT (IVA)

 

IVA is not really “your” tax; you collect it from clients and pass it on to the Agencia Tributaria. You:

1. Charge IVA on your invoices (standard rate is 21%, though some activities use 10% or 4%).
2. Pay IVA on business expenses (deductible IVA).
3. Every quarter, file Modelo 303: the difference between IVA charged and IVA paid is what you owe (or what gets carried forward as a credit if you paid more than you charged). Each January you also file Modelo 390, the annual summary of all your quarterly IVA returns.

Some professional activities are IVA-exempt (certain education, health, and specific artistic or literary activities), in which case you don’t charge IVA at all but also can’t deduct the IVA on your own expenses.

If you invoice clients based outside Spain, different rules apply. For clients in the EU with a valid VAT number, you typically don’t charge Spanish IVA, but you must file Modelo 349 declaring the intra-community transaction. For non-EU clients, other export rules apply. It’s worth checking the specific rule for your situation before invoicing.

 

Social Security contributions (Cuota de Autónomo)

 

Since 2023, the cuota de autónomo under the RETA is based on your real net income, not a flat amount, following the framework set out in the “Estatuto del Trabajo Autónomo”. The system works like this:

1. You estimate your monthly net income (income minus deductible expenses).
2. That places you in one of 15 income brackets.
3. Each bracket has a minimum and maximum contribution base, and your monthly quota is a percentage of the base you choose within that bracket.
4. You can change your bracket up to six times a year to adjust to how your income actually evolves.
5. At year-end, Social Security compares your real annual income to what you paid and either charges you the difference or refunds the excess (regularización).

For 2026, quotas remain frozen at 2025 levels across all 15 brackets, with only a small increase from the Mecanismo de Equidad Intergeneracional (MEI), which rose from 0.8% to 0.9%. Minimum quotas across brackets currently range from roughly €200 to over €600 per month, depending on income level.

New autónomos benefit from the tarifa plana: a flat quota of €80/month (plus the MEI surcharge) for the first 12 months. This can be extended to 24 months if your net annual income stays below the SMI (Spain’s minimum interprofessional wage, €17,094/year in 2026).

Certain protected groups (people with disability, gender violence survivors, victims of terrorism) may qualify for the extended or enhanced flat quota regardless of income.

Here you have a table with all the specific amounts that self-employed workers have to pay as social security contributions. This table is calculated with the mean of the established bases of each tranche:

Reduced table (for performances lower than the minimum legal wage, SMI)

 

General table (for performances equal to or greater than the minimum legal wage, SMI)

 

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How to calculate your deductions and expenses

 

Your tax bill is calculated on profit, so every deductible expense lowers what you owe in both IRPF and Social Security contributions. To be deductible, an expense generally needs to be linked to your economic activity, properly invoiced, and recorded in your books.

Common deductible expenses include:

• Office supplies, equipment, and software
• Rent and utilities for a workspace (proportional if you work from home)
• Professional insurance and training
• Advertising and marketing costs
• Travel and transport directly tied to your activity
• Professional fees (gestoría, legal advice)

On top of itemised expenses, self-employed individuals in direct estimation can apply a flat 7% deduction for generic hard-to-justify expenses (3% for corporate autónomos), applied automatically to your net income when calculating your Social Security bracket, up to a capped amount.

Keep every invoice and receipt. Undocumented expenses are one of the most common reasons for problems in an Agencia Tributaria inspection.

 

Freelance tax models for your calculation

 

How you calculate your taxable profit depends on your tax regime:

 

Not everyone can choose freely between these: eligibility depends on your activity type and annual revenue, and the list of activities allowed under módulos has been shrinking in recent years. Most professional services (consulting, legal, design, marketing, etc.) are required to use direct estimation.

 

Useful tips for effective tax management

 

You have done your autonomo tax calculation, now what? Here are some tips:

• Track income and expenses monthly, not just before each quarterly deadline. It’s the only way to know your real numbers before Hacienda tells you; running them through an autónomo tax calculator each month can help you spot issues early.
• Update your Social Security bracket when your income changes. Since you can adjust it up to six times a year, there’s no reason to end up with a large regularización bill.
• Set aside a percentage of every invoice for taxes. A common rule of thumb is to put aside 25-30% of your net profit, though your actual rate depends on your bracket and expenses.
• Keep all invoices and receipts organized from day one. Retroactively reconstructing expense records is far harder than filing them as you go.
• Know your deadlines: Modelo 130 (IRPF) and Modelo 303 (IVA) are both due quarterly, typically by the 20th of the month following each quarter’s end (with slightly different dates in January, when Modelo 390 is also due).
• Get a gestor if your situation is complex. Once you invoice internationally, hire staff, or mix regimes, professional help usually pays for itself in avoided errors and optimized deductions.

If you still have any doubts or want assistance calculating your taxes, contact us, Balcells Group, and our expert accounting team will be happy to help you.