Agreed. One of the key differences between ESP and PRT GV program procedures is that the former uses their consulates abroad to accept applications and do pre-screening/analysis on the application before forwarding to their central agency. This de-burdens the central agency from having to constantly follow up with the applicant if there are missed/additional documents required.
Under my research, Spanish GV holders need 10 years of physical residence to apply for citizenship. 02 years is only applied for the latin american. I might be wrong. If it is just 2 years of physical requirement for Spanish GV, I agree that it is quite fast. But if it is 10 year physcal residence requirement, then it is horrible.
One more important difference about Spanish and PT GV is that when applying the Spanish GV applicant will be requested to declare all assets and bank accounts globally. With PT GV, there is no such request. Only proof for source of fund is enough.
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Yes, it is my understanding too that 10 years in Spain is required for a Spanish passport.
However, I think you may be confusing two things for the Spanish GV. We received a Spanish GV in May 2024. The only financial information we had to disclose was a bank account in Spain with enough funds to meet the 2 year minimum.
But yes if we become tax residents in Spain we will have to complete the infamous Form 720 as part of tax filing. This does request information about all your world wide assets as Spain has a wealth tax (except for a few areas like Madrid). Since Spain does not have any thing like PT NHR tax regime (which will go away) you will pay Spanish taxes on your ww income.
But we can be GV holders and not become tax residents - by staying less than 183 days per year.
And our Spanish GV approval took less than 30 calendar days. We filed on April 24 and received the letters granting the GV on May 20.
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… but the Beckham Law is still available for foreigners for the first 6 years, to shield most non-Spanish worldwide income?
Thanks much for sharing.
Regarding financial disclosure of applicant for Spanish GV, I know it from a friend of a friend. He applied Spanish GV 3-4 years ago. Things could be different at that time or I might have misunderstood his story.
Yes I agree the Beckham Law does not require taxing of ww income for 5 years. I could be wrong but it seems to me this will apply to a small subset of applicants as you need to have a job offer in Spain from a Spanish company before you come. Though I guess a person could first seek a job offer and then decide to move. Overall, I expect that to receive such an offer you will have to be fluent in Spanish. (There are a couple of other ways including being transferred to Spain by a foreign company. )
So yes anyone who is seeking a job offer or has one and who meets the conditions should look into this Law.
Yes, it’s a subset.
But with the demise of PT NHR, Spain GV offers investors a route into the EU while shielding their assets. The major difference from PGV is the need to reside in Spain 183 days, but for that you get protection from capital gains tax (with NHR doesn’t offer) and only a 5 year window (not 10 years under NHR).
If I could go back in time, I’d opt for Spanish GV or NLV solid, despite it takes 10 years. After we finally come out alive from the painful initial application stage, next we get to face the impasse of having the residency continually renewed (at this moment, still no slots are in sight for GV renewals) because it must be kept valid the whole time until citizenship is achieved. Suing once again is the only hope to get things moving.
IRN processing nationality has generally slowed down since 2022 second half. I know one IRN just completely paused on processing citizenship requests for the entire year of 2023, due to severe understaffing. Few lucky applicants still received it after 1 year based on naturalisation but a lot of other people having waited for 2 years and waiting time is trending up ( I have never heard anyone suing IRN).
I’d rather have a much easier but slightly longer period with Spain than Portugal.
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Peter, I agree!
Madrid used to be exempt from the wealth tax but they changed the rules so if the province doesn’t take the wealth tax then you pay the amount to the government anyway so all regions of Spain effectively have the wealth tax now.
I am getting increasingly frustrated with the slowness of this process. Obviously, we are fortunate to not be completely reliant on this decision, and things could always be worse. Nevertheless, it is frustrating waiting something that used to resolve within a year. I’d consider filing a lawsuit, but those seem to be risky at best. Not sure what to do.
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Sounds like describing Mao Ze dong.
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Don’t do it!
Go for D7.
D7 is only useful if you are in a position to move to Portugal, and can commit to the minimum number of days in the country. If you can do those things, why would anyone have applied for the GV? They have different purposes.
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The game here is: 7 days/year. Without “7 days per year” term, no one would apply for GV. If Spanish GV could reduce physical requirement from 183 days (tax resident) to 30 days (non- tax resident), it could take over 99% market of GV from Portugal Hungary Greece…So far, the key element 7 days/year is something that other countries know since 2013 but somehow they cannot bring up a new program to beat up PT GV. I wish they will soon bring up something. Only way to kill off the bureaucracy/arrogance of PT GV is to have something equivalently competitive on the market but with better processing time. If this happens, PTGV will drop from 1200-1400 applicants/year to 10-100, and consequently they have to change their attitude and way of delivering their services to attract the investors.
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This is all true, but the paradox is that if nobody applied for PGV, the processing times would be great and everyone would apply for PGV…
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Fundamentally, the Spanish GV is off the table because of their wealth tax
I don’t understand why people here do not worry about PT introducing wealth tax and exit tax in the future! We GV investors could be trapped in the future.
Because most governments realize wealth taxes are foolish and the trend has been away from wealth taxes, not toward them.
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As long as the taxation basis is on residency and not on citizenship, I am ok with that. It would be huge waste of time/money/effort if we were to go through 12+ years of PGV journey and then when we finally get the Portuguese citizenship, the government of the day would introduce a wealth tax based on citizenship. It would be crazy to be giving up Portuguese citizenship just to avoid a wealth tax after going through all these ordeal.