The Beckham Law and concurrent employment relationships in Spain: an analysis of binding ruling V5132-26

At a glance: a taxpayer under the Beckham Law may take up a second employment relationship with another Spanish-resident employer, even part-time, without this constituting a cause of exclusion under article 118 RIRPF. The reason is that the requirement that the move be a consequence of an employment contract is a condition of access, verified at the time of the move, whereas the only substantive condition that must be maintained throughout the regime is the absence of income obtained through a permanent establishment. The relevant limit is not the number of employers but whether the second relationship is genuinely one of employment.

Binding ruling V5132-26, issued on 9 July 2026, resolves a question frequently raised by taxpayers under the Beckham Law, the special regime for inbound workers under article 93 LIRPF, whose professional activity in Spain expands beyond the employment that prompted their move. The reply is favourable to the taxpayer and, in our view, correct. It is also notably brief: it reproduces the applicable provisions and concludes in a single sentence, without developing the reasoning that leads to that conclusion. Its interest therefore lies less in what it says than in the structure of the regime it reveals and in the implicit limit that the description of facts itself allows one to identify.

The ruling is binding under article 89.1 of Law 58/2003, the General Tax Act. It binds the Administration in relation to the taxpayer who requested it and expresses the criterion applicable to cases presenting the same facts and circumstances. It is administrative doctrine, not case law.

Background and question raised

The taxpayer has been tax resident in Spain since 2023 and has been taxed since then under the regime of article 93 LIRPF. He holds an employment relationship with a Spanish-resident entity and is considering entering, in addition, into a second part-time employment relationship with another entity also resident in Spanish territory. He states that he will hold no shares in that second entity and will perform no functions of management or legal representation in it.

The question raised is whether the simultaneous receipt of employment income from two employment relationships in Spain is compatible with remaining under the special regime.

The reply reproduces article 93 LIRPF, paragraphs 1 and 2, transcribes paragraphs 1, 2 and 5 of article 118 RIRPF on exclusion from the regime, and concludes that the simultaneous receipt of employment income resulting from adding, to the employment relationship the taxpayer already held in Spain, a second part-time employment relationship with another employer in Spain, would not constitute a cause of exclusion from the special regime. Nothing more.

Conditions of access and conditions of continued eligibility

To understand the scope of that conclusion it is necessary to distinguish between the conditions whose fulfilment is verified at the time of the move and those that must be satisfied throughout the application of the regime. The reply does not draw this distinction, but it is the one that underpins it.

Paragraph a) of article 93.1, which requires the taxpayer not to have been resident in Spain during the five tax periods preceding the move, is a historical condition: it is either met or not at the time of the move, and no subsequent circumstance can alter it.

Paragraph b), which requires that the move occur as a consequence of one of the circumstances it lists, among them the commencement of an employment relationship with an employer in Spain, is likewise a condition referring to the time of the move. What the provision requires is a causal connection between the move and the qualifying circumstance. Once that connection has been established and residence acquired, the subsequent course of the employment relationship that prompted the move does not affect compliance, because the event to which the condition refers has already occurred. The regime does not require that the employment contract which justified the move continue throughout the six tax periods of application, nor that it be the only one, nor that the taxpayer's remuneration derive exclusively from it.

Paragraph c), which requires the taxpayer not to obtain income that would be characterised as obtained through a permanent establishment in Spanish territory, is by contrast a condition of continued eligibility. It must be satisfied in each of the tax periods in which the regime applies. Its breach results in exclusion with effect from the tax period in which it occurs, under article 118.1 RIRPF, must be notified to the Administration within one month by means of Modelo 149, under article 118.2, and has a consequence worth emphasising: the excluded taxpayer may not elect the regime again, under article 118.5. Exclusion is final.

It follows that, once within the regime, the only substantive matter the taxpayer must monitor as regards his sources of income is that none of them constitutes business income obtained through a permanent establishment in Spain. Employment income, whether from one or several employers, resident in Spain or not, raises no such issue. It is included in the taxable base under article 93.2.b) LIRPF, which deems all employment income received during the application of the regime to be obtained in Spanish territory, is taxed on an aggregated basis without set-off under paragraph c), and is charged at the rates provided in paragraph e) of the same subsection.

Seen in this light, the conclusion of the ruling is not a concession but a necessary consequence of the structure of the regime. Concurrent employment relationships do not appear among the causes of exclusion because there is no systematic reason why they should.

The conclusion is not new. The DGT had anticipated it in ruling V0466-26 of 27 February 2026, on substantially identical facts, in which it identified as the only qualification that the second employment relationship should not fall within the special relationship of professional sportspersons excluded by article 93.1.b).1º LIRPF. Ruling V5132-26 confirms that criterion and consolidates it as doctrine.

The employment character of the second relationship

The description of facts includes two details that deserve attention: the taxpayer will hold no shares in the second entity and will perform no functions of management or legal representation in it. The reply makes no reference to these circumstances in its reasoning, and its conclusion is not made conditional on them. But their inclusion is not accidental, and it is worth understanding why the taxpayer mentioned them.

The absence of a shareholding and of management functions is what allows the second relationship to be described without reservation as employment. Where the taxpayer holds shares in the entity for which he renders services and those services are professional in nature, the third paragraph of article 27.1 LIRPF characterises the remuneration as business income if the recipient is registered in the special social security scheme for self-employed workers. A business activity carried on personally from Spain is carried on through a permanent establishment under article 13.1.a) of the consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act, and the condition in paragraph c) of article 93.1 would not be met. That is the situation we examined in connection with ruling V1200-26, and the one the taxpayer in this ruling has sought to rule out in advance.

From this follows the real limit of the doctrine the ruling states. The compatibility of the regime with a plurality of employment relationships is complete, but it requires that each of them be genuinely one of employment within the meaning of article 17.1 LIRPF, that is, that the features of dependence and working for another's account that characterise employment be present. A second part-time relationship formalised as an employment contract but consisting in practice of professional services rendered with organisational autonomy, own resources and assumption of risk could be recharacterised by the Administration as a business activity, with the consequence of triggering the cause of exclusion and, with it, the impossibility of electing the regime again. The form of the contract is not decisive; the reality of the relationship is. And the burden of proving that reality rests on the taxpayer under article 105.1 of the General Tax Act.

Consequences for taxation and withholding

The compatibility of the regime with two employment relationships has practical consequences which the ruling does not address and which should be anticipated.

The first concerns the rate of tax. Employment income from both employers is aggregated for the purposes of the scale in article 93.2.e) LIRPF, under which the rate of twenty-four per cent applies up to six hundred thousand euros of taxable base and forty-seven per cent to the excess. The threshold is a single one per taxpayer, not per employer.

The second concerns withholding. Each employer withholds on the remuneration it pays in accordance with the special rules of the regime, and the DGT has specified, in ruling V0387-17 and again in V0466-26, that the six-hundred-thousand-euro limit is applied independently by each payer, so that the excess over that figure paid by each of them is subject to the higher rate regardless of what the other pays. Neither employer knows, nor needs to know, the remuneration paid by the other. Where the sum of both exceeds the threshold and neither reaches it individually, the tax withheld will fall short of the liability, and the difference will be settled in Modelo 151 for the year. This is not a legal problem, but it is a cash-flow one, and the taxpayer should plan for it.

The third concerns social security. Two concurrent employment relationships give rise to a situation of multiple employment with its own rules on contributions and the apportionment of contribution bases between employers. This lies outside the ruling and outside the tax regime, but it is part of the same decision and should be analysed together with it.

What the ruling does not analyse

The ruling answers the question raised and does not extend to neighbouring situations that practice throws up with equal frequency.

It does not address the reverse situation, in which the taxpayer terminates the employment relationship that prompted his move. The distinction between conditions of access and of continued eligibility leads to the same conclusion, and in this case administrative doctrine supports it expressly. Ruling V1053-17 of 4 May 2017 held that voluntary termination of the employment relationship that prompted the move does not constitute a cause of exclusion from the regime under articles 117 and 118 RIRPF. Ruling V0009-24 of 12 February 2024 extended that criterion to the case in which the taxpayer, having left his employment, takes up the directorship of a company he has incorporated in Spain. The regime continues for as long as tax residence and the absence of income obtained through a permanent establishment persist.

Nor does it address a second relationship with a non-resident employer. The conclusion should be the same, because article 93.2.b) LIRPF deems all employment income to be obtained in Spain regardless of the residence of the payer, and paragraph c) of article 93.1 is unaffected. The practical difference lies in withholding: a non-resident employer not operating in Spain is not obliged to withhold, so the whole of the tax on that remuneration is settled in Modelo 151.

And it does not address the compatibility of the regime with the receipt of business income not obtained through a permanent establishment. This is a difficult area, because a business activity carried on personally by a Spanish resident from his home is unlikely to fall outside the notion of permanent establishment in article 13.1.a) TRLIRNR, and no conclusion on the point should be drawn from this ruling.

Assessment

The DGT's position is, in our view, correct and consistent with its earlier doctrine. Concurrent employment relationships are not among the causes of exclusion in article 118 RIRPF, and the conclusion accords with the purpose of the regime, which is to attract qualified workers to Spain and to tax in Spain the whole of their employment income, an objective to which a second employment relationship in Spanish territory contributes rather than detracts.

One observation may nonetheless be made on the form of the reply. The ruling confines itself to transcribing article 93 LIRPF and article 118 RIRPF and to stating its conclusion in a sentence, without articulating the distinction between conditions of access and conditions of continued eligibility that underpins it, and without referring to ruling V0466-26, which had resolved the same point five months earlier. That distinction is what allows the conclusion to be carried over to neighbouring cases with confidence, and its express statement would have given the ruling greater doctrinal value. In its absence, the reply reads as the resolution of a particular case when in fact it describes the architecture of the regime.

Concluding observations

Ruling V5132-26 confirms that a taxpayer under the regime of article 93 LIRPF may diversify his sources of employment income in Spain without putting its application at risk. The condition that the move be a consequence of an employment contract is exhausted at the time of the move; what must be maintained throughout the six tax periods is the absence of income obtained through a permanent establishment and, naturally, tax residence in Spain.

For anyone in this situation, the relevant analysis is not the number of employers but the nature of each relationship. It is advisable to verify that the second relationship displays the features of dependence and working for another's account that characterise employment, with particular care where the taxpayer holds shares in the entity or where the services are professional in nature, because the exclusion that would follow from recharacterisation is irreversible. It is advisable to anticipate the effect of aggregating remuneration on the six-hundred-thousand-euro threshold and the settlement this may require in the annual return. And it is advisable to document the reality of both employment relationships with the same diligence with which the one that prompted the move was documented, because in a later assessment the Administration will examine the substance of each of them, not the form of the contract.

Lullius is a tax boutique based in Palma de Mallorca specialising in international tax, private wealth and tax litigation. The authors contributed the Spain chapter to the tax litigation guides of both Chambers and Partners (Tax Controversy 2026) and The Legal 500 (Tax Disputes Comparative Guide 2026).

Legal notice. This article is provided for general information only. It reflects the position as at September 2026 and does not constitute legal or tax advice, nor does it create a lawyer-client relationship. No action should be taken, or refrained from, on the basis of its content without specific professional advice on the particular facts.