Tax on pension

I assume that you have applied for and been granted Residency (you can't stay >3 months in Spain without it).

If you spend >6 months in any year in Spain, you are tax-resident in Spain.

You must submit a tax return. 

The details of the tax return will determine if you need to pay tax (and how much).

The Spanish tax year is January to December. The closing date for for Jan-Dec 2019 is this June.

If you are fiscal resident in Spain then yes you do....only certain government pensions remain taxed at source in the UK...other income taxed in Spain ...personal allowance is almost half of that in UK so you will possibly pay more tax in Spain.

Be very careful who you use to do your return. There is wide-spread ignorance among the gestors and accountants (never use a solicitor for something as simple as tax!). Tax allowances have been improved lately and our returns this year came back at zero tax, but only because a government pension was declared in the correct box on the form. The Agencia Tributaria website has plenty information in English, and you can get an appointment with them when the lockdown eases for them to help you with the process.

I strongly recommend that you start doing it now - the period for doing the return for 2019 opened on 1st April and only runs to the end of June.

This year's return took me about ten minutes to do online, for two people.

Hi Peter

Helpful post - do you have a link to the correct Agencia Tributaria website, as I seem to get a couple of different ones when I search?

Thanks

https://www.agenciatributaria.es/

Change the language to English at top right.

Thanks Peter. I had the wrong one!

As soon as you become a Spanish resident ...all your world wide assets become taxable in Spain...this includes your pensions and so on ...be warned if you are thinking of coming over to Spain with just a UK state pension..even if you can afford to buy a property outright you will find that your pension is not going to be enough to live on.

Thanks so much again for your help. Much appreciated. 

It’s because I got an email from PALS solicitors telling me about it that I made this enquiry. Mainly because, having used them to buy my house, I have since seen a lot of not so good reviews about them.