Freelancing From Spain for U.S. Clients: VAT, Taxes and U.S. Forms

Freelancing from Spain for U.S. clients works on the telework permit or the self-employed authorization, and never on the non-lucrative permit. A U.S. company with no Spanish branch pays no Spanish VAT, a U.S. client with no Spanish presence withholds no Spanish income tax, and a Spanish certificate of coverage means you pay Spanish self-employed contributions in place of U.S. self-employment tax. Registration and contributions run as for any autónomo, or self-employed worker, in Spain; a U.S. consumer rather than a company can change the VAT answer. This article is for informational purposes only and is not tax or legal advice; verify current requirements with the relevant Spanish authority or a licensed professional.

What goes wrong when you invoice U.S. clients from Spain?

• The wrong permit. According to the UGE, the unit that grants telework permits, the non-lucrative permit allows no work, remote work included.
• Skipping the invoice. Services outside the EU still need an invoice (article 2.3 of Royal Decree 1619/2012), and the Dirección General de Tributos (DGT), the tax ministry’s rulings office, held in V1713-21 that a U.S. client cannot waive it.
• Charging VAT by habit. A U.S. company with no Spanish branch owes none; a U.S. consumer may, depending on the service and where it is used.
• Ignoring your U.S. costs. U.S. platform and software fees come with Spanish VAT that you owe yourself (article 84 of the VAT law).
• Paying social security twice. Without a Spanish certificate of coverage, the 15.3 percent U.S. self-employment tax can stack on top of RETA, the Spanish regime for the self-employed.

Spanish VAT by client, at a glance

Find your client type in the left column, and the rest of the row tells you what to bill and where to report it.

Modelo 303 is the quarterly VAT return, and Modelo 390 is its annual summary. The table covers the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, because VAT does not apply in the Canary Islands, Ceuta or Melilla (Agencia Tributaria); the box numbers are the Agencia Tributaria’s, and Basque and Navarre treasuries use their own forms; the income tax rules further down leave out the Basque Country and Navarre.

The permit decides who your clients can be

Your permit sets your client list before any tax rule does.

Telework permit. Better known as the digital nomad visa, it lets a self-employed holder work for companies located in Spain for up to 20 percent of total professional activity, never as an employee (article 74 bis of Law 14/2013; the UGE’s telework FAQ). The entry ticket is a commercial relationship of at least 3 months with companies outside Spain that have been active for at least 1 year. The catch: the Washington consulate also rules out individuals, international organizations, government agencies, universities, foundations, NGOs and other non-profits as clients. The digital nomad visa guide covers the application.

Self-employed authorization. If U.S. consumers are among your clients, this authorization is the usual route, set out in Hoja 14, the Ministry of Inclusion’s information sheet. It runs for 1 year and is tied to one autonomous community and one sector (article 83 of Royal Decree 1155/2024).

Non-lucrative permit. Article 61 of the same decree defines it as residence without work or professional activity, which takes it off the table for freelancing (non-lucrative visa guide).

Spanish VAT when the client is in the United States

Here is how it works: the VAT answer turns on whether the client is a business or a consumer, and, for consumers, on what you sell and where it gets used.

Business clients: not subject, still invoiced

A service to a business acting as such takes place where the client is established (article 69.Uno.1 of the VAT law), which means a U.S. company pays no Spanish VAT, unless the service is for its Spanish branch. The DGT applied this in V2145-24 to a freelancer paid through PayPal by a U.S. company. To treat a client outside the EU as a business, article 18.3 of EU Regulation 282/2011 accepts a certificate from its tax authority confirming activity that allows a VAT refund, or a business number or other proof identifying the company, checked with normal commercial security measures. No Spanish page read names a qualifying U.S. document, so file away the contract and the company’s details.

Consumers: a list, then a use test

Selling to individuals is where the detail piles up. A service to a consumer is taxed in Spain when you supply it from Spain (article 69.Uno.2), unless it appears on the list of article 69.Dos and the consumer is established outside the EU. That list includes intellectual property licensing, advertising, consulting, legal, engineering and accounting services, data processing and translation (AEAT VAT manual).

Article 70.Dos pulls a listed service back into Spanish VAT when the consumer actually uses it in Spain; since May 26, 2023, that applies to listed services only when the client is a consumer (2025 manual). Older rulings such as V2426-21 and V0773-22 apply the previous wording, which also covered businesses, so their use-and-enjoyment passages are out of date.

An American client who already lives in Spain is a consumer established in Spain, and Spanish VAT applies.

For online courses, mostly pre-recorded, sold to individuals outside the EU, mainly in the United States, the DGT found no Spanish VAT in V2901-23. That answer rests on articles 69.Uno.2, 70.Uno.4 and 70.Uno.8 read together, and the 2026 ruling V1096-26 on telecom agrees. Keep evidence of where each buyer is (Regulation 282/2011, article 24 septies).

Services connected with property in Spain, property management for example, are taxed in Spain whoever the client is (article 70.Uno.1).

Your own expenses and U.S. software

The upside of VAT-free invoices: you keep the deduction on the VAT you pay, because article 94.Uno.2 preserves it for operations outside Spain that would allow it inside. An excess carries forward for 4 years (article 99.Cinco of the VAT law), or you claim the balance at December 31 on the year’s last return (article 115.Uno).

A service bought by a business based in Spain takes place in Spain, wherever the supplier sits. So when a U.S. platform or software supplier is not established in Spain, the VAT on it is yours to pay (article 84.Uno.2), a rule the DGT applied to telecom services in V1096-26 of May 2026. The Modelo 303 instructions put the VAT you self-assess in boxes 12 and 13 (boxes 10 and 11 when the supplier bills from another EU state), and the share you can deduct among boxes 28 to 39.

The invoice

When the client is in the United States, the invoicing regulation, Royal Decree 1619/2012, sets these rules:

• Forget the simplified invoice when the service takes place outside the EU: since July 2021, article 4.4.d requires a full invoice at any amount (V1713-21, which allowed one up to 400 euros, predates that change).
• The client’s tax number is mandatory only in the three cases listed in article 6.1.d, and read literally, none of them covers a service to a U.S. company.
• No legal reference is needed: article 6.1.j only asks for one on exempt operations, and a service outside Spanish VAT is not exempt.
• Business clients must receive their invoice before the 16th of the month after the VAT became chargeable (article 11).
• Dollars and English are fine; only VAT charged has to be in euros (article 12).
• A platform may invoice in your name only under a prior written agreement (article 5). If the platform sits outside the EU, the Agencia Tributaria must be notified, unless its country has a mutual collection assistance instrument, and no page read says whether the United States has one.
• The business e-invoice of Royal Decree 238/2026 covers Spanish recipients only, starting for most freelancers 24 months after a ministerial order not confirmed as published.

Modelo 349, the summary of intra-EU transactions, only covers services taxed in another EU state (VAT manual), which keeps U.S. clients off it.

Income tax: quarterly payments without withholding

No client withholds for you here, so the prepayments are on you. As a Spanish tax resident, you are taxed on worldwide income, whoever pays (article 2 of the income tax law), and the tax residence certificate guide explains when residence starts. A non-resident payer withholds Spanish income tax only through a permanent establishment in Spain or on specific payments (article 76 of the income tax regulation), so a U.S. client with no Spanish presence withholds nothing.

Mostly U.S. clients means Modelo 130, the quarterly income tax prepayment. A professional is spared it only when at least 70 percent of the previous year’s activity income carried withholding, or, in the start year, of the income of the prepayment period (article 109 of the income tax regulation); U.S. income carries none, but Spanish clients withhold under article 95. Each quarter, the bill is 20 percent of net income since January 1, minus what you already paid (article 110; procedure G601). For the books, simplified direct estimation is open when last year’s turnover across all your activities stayed under 600,000 euros and you have not opted out. It gives you a flat 5 percent of net income (10 percent for activities in Ceuta in 2026), capped at 2,000 euros a year, to cover provisions and hard-to-justify expenses (article 30, rule 2.ª, of the income tax regulation; Renta 2025 manual).

Dollars into euros. No ruling covers a freelancer’s invoices directly. The DGT’s V0528-23 applies the official European Central Bank rate to a resident’s foreign-currency income, without naming the type of income. Business income follows corporate tax rules, whose base starts from the accounting result (article 28 of the income tax law; Law 27/2014, article 10.3). The General Accounting Plan uses the spot rate on each transaction’s date and books exchange differences at payment or, for invoices still unpaid at year end, at the closing rate. For box 120 of Modelo 303 and for Modelo 130, pick one documented method, use it every quarter and keep the rates on file.

Invoicing software. VeriFactu, the set of rules for invoicing software, reaches individuals from July 1, 2027 in the common tax territory (FAQ).

Getting paid. Cash is off limits for payments of 1,000 euros or more when either party acts as a business or professional (10,000 euros when a private payer shows no Spanish tax address), and the fine is 25 percent (Law 7/2012, article 7). U.S. accounts belong on Modelo 720, the informative return on assets abroad, once your combined account balances abroad on December 31, or their last-quarter average, top 50,000 euros.

Social Security: RETA, and the certificate for the IRS

You pay into one system, not two, as long as the paperwork is in order. A self-employed teleworker has to register in RETA, and the UGE rules out keeping home-country coverage under a bilateral agreement.

Article 4 of the 1986 U.S.-Spain agreement, in force since April 1, 1988, places a self-employed person covered by both systems under the law of the country of residence only. The SSA’s manual, POMS RS 02001.475, concludes that a self-employed U.S. citizen living in Spain is exempt from SECA, the U.S. self-employment tax, Medicare part included, though a U.S. return is still due.

The SSA’s undated Spain pamphlet adds a five-year exception for someone who moves an existing business. The agreement itself has no such exception, and the Seguridad Social’s April 8, 2024 announcement presents self-employed postings of up to 5 years as new in the 2024 agreement, absent from the SSA’s list of agreements in force, where Spain shows only the 1986 one. Plan around the residence rule; the U.S. Social Security guide covers the rest.

Your proof is form E/USA.1. According to the Seguridad Social’s page on the agreement, a central unit of the TGSS, the Social Security Treasury, issues it to self-employed people covered by Spain only because they live there, for their work trips to the United States; the page says nothing about freelancers who never work there. Each source points to a different desk: the pamphlet to the TGSS provincial office where you do business, POMS RS 02001.485 to its central office in Madrid, and the 1986 administrative arrangement to the INSS, the National Social Security Institute. No online procedure, time frame or cost turned up. Plan on the TGSS, the office Spain’s own page names.

With the certificate in hand, the Schedule SE instructions set out three steps:

1. Skip Schedule SE entirely.
2. Attach a copy of the certificate to Form 1040.
3. On Schedule 2, line 4, check box 3 and enter “Exempt, see attached statement” (also on the IRS page on self-employment tax abroad).

Without it, the tax kicks in at $400 of net earnings.

The U.S. return: W-9, 1099s and Schedule C

Your U.S. paperwork starts with the form you send your clients. Give U.S. clients Form W-9, never the W-8BEN, whose instructions exclude citizens living abroad. From tax year 2026, clients report payments of $2,000 or more on Form 1099-NEC, and marketplaces send a Form 1099-K above $20,000 in more than 200 transactions. Either way, you report all your income.

Your business lives on Schedule C. Earned income is sourced where the work is done (Publication 54), so work done in Spain counts as foreign income. The foreign earned income exclusion reaches $132,900 for 2026, but it never touches self-employment tax.

The saving clause of the U.S.-Spain convention, article 1(3), unchanged by the 2013 protocol (consolidated text), lets the United States tax its citizens as if the treaty did not exist. Article 1(4) still keeps article 24 for them, and its paragraph 3 treats income taxed only by citizenship as arising in Spain as far as needed, without ever leaving U.S. tax below a non-citizen’s. The Form 1116 instructions keep that citizen-only re-sourced income out of the separate treaty category.

Estimated tax goes on Form 1040-ES, generally once you expect to owe at least $1,000, in 2026 installments due April 15, June 15 and September 15, 2026 and January 15, 2027. Citizens abroad get an automatic 2-month extension to June 15, with interest running from April 15.

U.S. LLCs and TRADE status: the open questions

A U.S. LLC. Spain attributes the income of foreign entities comparable to its own pass-through entities to their members (article 87 of the income tax law; 2020 DGT resolution). On a resident’s single-member U.S. entity, however, the DGT gave only a conditional answer (V1382-25). No ruling found covers an LLC billing for work done in Spain, and no page says whether the telework permit accepts your own company as the client; its 1-year activity rule would shut out a new one anyway. For the local alternative, see forming a Spanish limited company, or SL.

TRADE status. An economically dependent self-employed worker, or TRADE, works personally for one client that pays at least 75 percent of the income and has no employees or subcontractors (Law 20/2007). Royal Decree 197/2009 sets no residence condition for that client, and no official page deals with a U.S. client.

Your next step: check the permit, then set up the quarter

You can have the quarter running smoothly by taking it in this order. Start by checking your clients against your permit: on the telework permit, companies only, with Spanish ones at most 20 percent of your work. Next, set up a VAT-free invoice for U.S. companies, a record of each consumer’s location, and Modelo 303 and 130 before the next quarterly window, all listed in the self-employed guide. Once you are in RETA, ask the TGSS for form E/USA.1.

With only U.S. company clients, the invoicing and the Spanish returns are a do-it-yourself job. Bring in a tax adviser or a gestor (administrative agent) for a mix of U.S. consumers and businesses, a U.S. LLC, or a certificate of coverage that stalls, and a U.S. international tax preparer for the Schedule SE statement and Form 1116.

Every step of your move to Spain, from the visa to settling in, sits in order in the Spain Navigator.