Tax optimisation in Spain
We analyse your companies, profits and investments to see whether a holding structure can help you organise and optimise your business assets.
A holding company is a company that doesn't trade: it owns. It doesn't invoice customers or carry on its own business; its role is to own the shares in your companies and your investments, and to centralise the profits they generate.
Parent company. Owns everything.
The ones that invoice and generate profit. One per business, each with its risks ring-fenced.
What you buy with the profit already accumulated at the top: property, a portfolio or new projects.
Each business in its own company, all under the same parent. If one project goes wrong, it doesn't take the others or your personal assets down with it.
Dividends move up from the operating company to the holding almost toll-free, and you reinvest them in full in the next project without going through your personal income tax first.
Preparing the future sale of one of your companies, bringing in a partner or setting up generational succession is much cleaner from a parent company.
Your operating company pays out 100.000 € of profit. On the left, you receive it directly as an individual shareholder. On the right, your holding receives it.
That isn't a 20.630 € saving, it's a deferral: the day you pay the money out to yourself you'll pay the savings-income rates anyway. The real advantage is moving 98.750 € instead of 78.120 €. And if you're wondering “what if I want to use that money myself?”, you can, without paying it out. Right below.
Indicative calculation using the 2025 savings-income rates for personal income tax (19% up to 6.000 €, 21% up to 50.000 € and 23% up to 200.000 €) and the standard Corporate Income Tax rate of 25%. The art. 21 LIS exemption requires a shareholding of at least 5% held for one year, and is reduced by 5% for management expenses (art. 21.10 LIS), hence the 95%. It does not take into account your specific situation or other income. It does not replace a personalised study.
Taking it out as a dividend costs you between 19% and 23% before you touch it. It's not the only way: there are three ways to make that money work for you without going through your tax return.
A parent company with profits and property is a much better guarantor than you alone: a mortgage, loan or credit line on terms you wouldn't get otherwise.
And the key: a loan is not income. That money isn't taxed in your personal income tax. You repay it with your salary or the rent you receive, at an interest rate far below the 19-23% on a dividend.
The holding must charge you a market-rate guarantee fee.
The parent company can lend you money directly. It reaches your pocket without going through savings-income rates: it's not a dividend, it's a loan you repay.
It only asks for the usual: a contract, market interest and repayments that actually happen.
Without that, the Tax Agency recharacterises it as a disguised dividend (art. 25.1.d LIRPF).
Premises, vehicles or equipment are bought with money that hasn't yet been taxed in your personal income tax, and the company deducts expenses and depreciation.
And it works both ways: if the premises are yours, you rent them to your holding and receive rent to repay the loan from point 01.
At market value (art. 18 LIS), with a contract and invoice.
All three are related-party transactions. The law doesn't prohibit them: it requires market pricing (art. 18 LIS) and paperwork. The problem is never doing them, it's doing them without a contract and without paying anything back: that's an undeclared dividend, with a penalty of 50% to 150%.
We set them up in writing from day one. That's what separates a structure that survives a tax audit from one that costs you twice what it saved.
It's not a structure for everyone. If you recognise yourself in several of these points, it's worth sitting down to look at it.
Your company makes money and builds up cash that you don't need to take out to live on. Today that cash sits idle in the operating company, exposed to business risk.
Two or more companies, or companies plus property and a portfolio, each on its own. Nobody has the full picture and moving money between them costs you tax.
You want to put what one business earns into the next one, into premises or a portfolio. If it goes through your personal income tax first, you reinvest with much less money.
A future sale, an investor or generational succession. This is prepared in advance, not in the month of the deal: the structure needs to have been in place for a while.
If you have a single small company and pay yourself all the profit every year to live on, a holding will cost you more than it saves: one more company to set up, keep accounts for and file returns for.
That said, not reinvesting isn't the same as having no use for the money: if you use it as backing to raise finance, it still pays off. What doesn't pay off is setting one up and leaving it idle, or doing it purely for the tax advantage — without a genuine business reason, the Tax Agency can overturn the deferral (art. 89.2 LIS).
We don't just set up a holding and leave it there. First we look at what you have, how it's taxed today and what you plan to do with it. Six points, and at the end a recommendation backed by numbers — including the option of doing nothing.
Which companies you have, who holds shares in each and in what percentage. The real starting point, not the one you think you have.
How much each company pays today and how much you pay. Without this snapshot it's impossible to say whether a holding improves anything or just complicates it.
Whether you reach the 5% required by art. 21 LIS, how long you've held them and how to contribute them to the parent company without an immediate tax cost.
What your companies pay out and what would happen if that flow went up to the holding. And how the money reaches you: a loan, rent or salary, documented at market value.
Where that money is going: another business, property, a portfolio. And how much guarantee capacity the parent's balance sheet gives you to borrow on better terms.
A sale, bringing in a partner or generational succession. Each needs a different structure, and it has to be set up in good time.
A free first call to see whether your case fits. If it has potential, the full study with the proposed structure, the numbers compared and a step-by-step timeline. And if it doesn't, we tell you there and then and you save yourself the study.
We look at your companies, your profits and what you want to do with them, and tell you with numbers whether a holding suits you. If it doesn't, we'll tell you that too.
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