Leaving Spain with a US LLC

Spain does not let go the day you board the plane. Several rules keep looking at your LLC in the year you leave and sometimes for years afterwards.

When you stop being Spanish tax resident (art. 9 LIRPF)

You remain resident in Spain if any one of these tests is met:

• More than 183 days in Spain in the calendar year. Sporadic absences count unless you prove tax residence in another country. If that country is a tax haven, the tax administration may ask you to prove 183 days of presence there.
• Centre of economic interests: the main nucleus or base of your activities or economic interests is in Spain, directly or indirectly.
• Family presumption: you are presumed resident, unless you prove otherwise, if your spouse (not legally separated) and your dependent minor children habitually live in Spain.

The IRPF tax period is the calendar year, which decides both the day count and which tax-haven list applies to a year.

The tax-haven quarantine (art. 8.2 LIRPF)

If you are a Spanish national and prove new tax residence in a country or territory "considered a tax haven" (paraíso fiscal), you remain an IRPF taxpayer in the year of the move and the following four years: five years in total.

The article still says "paraíso fiscal". Since Ley 11/2021, the tenth additional provision of Ley 36/2006 requires every such reference to be read as a reference to non-cooperative jurisdictions, which are set by ministerial order of the Finance Ministry. Where Spain has a treaty with a listed jurisdiction, these rules apply insofar as they do not conflict with it.

The list sits in Orden HFP/115/2023, amended (not replaced) by Orden HAC/649/2026 of 21 June 2026, published in the BOE on 27 June 2026 and in force from 28 June 2026:

• Removed: Barbados, Dominica, Gibraltar, Samoa (as regards its offshore business regime), Seychelles, and Trinidad and Tobago.
• Added: the Russian Federation as regards its international holding companies regime, from 28 December 2026.

For tax periods that had not ended when the amendment came into force, the previous wording of the list applies. Because the IRPF year is the calendar year, the two provisions together mean that 2026 is still governed by the old list, with those six territories on it, and that the amended list first applies to IRPF 2027.

The list in force includes, among others, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Vanuatu. Panama, Paraguay, Costa Rica, the UAE and the United States are not on it.

The exit tax (art. 95 bis LIRPF)

When you lose Spanish taxpayer status by changing residence, the unrealised gain on your shares and participations, your LLC interest included, is taxed if you were a Spanish taxpayer for at least 10 of the 15 tax periods before the last one you must declare, and:

• the market value of all your shares and participations exceeds EUR 4,000,000 in total, or
• failing that, you hold more than 25% of one entity and that holding is worth more than EUR 1,000,000; then only that holding is taxed.

Unlisted interests are valued, unless you prove a different market value, at the higher of the net equity in the last balance sheet closed before accrual and the average result of the last three closed financial years capitalised at 20%. The gain is savings income and goes into your last Spanish return, without penalty, late-payment interest or surcharge, together with any income still pending imputation.

On request, payment is deferred if you move temporarily for work to a country that is not a tax haven, or temporarily for any other reason to a country with a Spanish tax treaty containing an exchange-of-information clause; the debt is extinguished if you become a Spanish taxpayer again within five years without having transferred the shares. The option to pay only if, within ten years, you sell, leave the EU/EEA or breach the communication duty is reserved for moves to an EU/EEA state with effective information exchange. Paraguay, Panama, Costa Rica, the UAE and the US do not get it. If you move to a tax haven and stay a taxpayer under art. 8.2, the exit tax applies all the same. If you came to Spain under the impatriate regime, the ten-period count starts with the first year the regime no longer applied.

While you are still resident: CFC rules (art. 91 LIRPF)

Spain's CFC rule (transparencia fiscal internacional) imputes a foreign entity's income to you if you, alone or with related entities and relatives (spouse and relatives up to the second degree), hold 50% or more of its capital, equity, results or votes at its year end, and the tax it actually pays is less than 75% of what Spanish corporate tax would have been.

If the entity has no organisation of material and personal means of its own, you impute its total income, unless you prove the operations use a group entity's means or that it has valid economic reasons. A single-member LLC run by one person without staff is exposed to this rule for as long as you are resident. With its own means, only passive-type income is imputed, and not at all if it is below 15% of the entity's total income. For entities in non-cooperative jurisdictions there are presumptions against you, and the entity's data and accounts must be filed with your return. The carve-out for EU/EEA entities does not help a US LLC.

Place of effective management (art. 8 LIS)

An entity is Spanish resident for corporate tax if the direction and control of all its activities are located in Spain. A US LLC you manage day to day from Spain can be treated as a Spanish-resident company. If the entity sits in a nil-tax country or tax haven and its main assets or main activity are in Spain, the administration may even presume it.

How Spain classifies your LLC

Foreign entities whose legal nature is identical or analogous to Spanish income-attribution entities (entidades en atribución de rentas) are treated as such: their income is attributed to the members and keeps the character of the activity or source it comes from.

A binding interpretive resolution of the Directorate General of Taxes of 6 February 2020 (BOE 13 February 2020) sets three tests: the entity is not itself liable to a personal income tax in its state of formation; that state's law attributes its income to the members as it is earned, distributed or not; and the income keeps its character for each member. It binds the tax administration from its publication.

A 2006 competent authority agreement between Spain and the United States (BOE 13 August 2009) states that the treaty term "any other body of persons" includes an LLC treated as a partnership or as not separate from its owners for US federal tax purposes. A disregarded single-member LLC can obtain IRS Form 6166 stating that its single owner is a US resident. If you are not a US resident, the LLC does not give you that status.

To be plain: the 2020 resolution does not name US LLCs, and no binding DGT ruling on a single-member LLC could be retrieved. Transparency follows from applying the three tests; the administration has not decided it, and the risk is that it classifies the LLC differently. More on the tax treatment of the LLC.

The Modelo 720 after Ley 5/2022

While resident, you report foreign assets, including as beneficial owner. That covers your LLC's US bank account.

• Accounts: nothing to report if neither the 31 December balances nor the fourth-quarter average balances exceed EUR 50,000 in aggregate.
• Securities and equity interests, your LLC interest included, and real estate: a EUR 50,000 threshold per block.
• Crypto held abroad has its own return; the tax agency states it is not reported on the 720.

The filing window runs from 1 January to 31 March of the following year. After that, a new return is only due if an aggregate balance rose by more than EUR 20,000 or an account was cancelled. Following the CJEU judgment of 27 January 2022 (C-788/19), Ley 5/2022 removed the special penalty regime and the rule taxing undeclared assets without limitation period. The reporting obligation itself remains.

The exit sequence

Looking at Latin America? See how your LLC is taxed if you live in Paraguay or Panama.

Sources

Checked 26 October 2026.

• Ley 35/2006 (IRPF), consolidated text: boe.es
• Ley 36/2006 on the prevention of tax fraud: boe.es
• Orden HFP/115/2023, consolidated text: boe.es
• Orden HAC/649/2026 of 21 June 2026: boe.es
• Ley 27/2014 (corporate tax): boe.es
• DGT resolution of 6 February 2020: boe.es
• Spain and United States competent authority agreement on LLCs: boe.es
• Ley 58/2003 (General Tax Act): boe.es
• Ley 5/2022 of 9 March 2022: boe.es
• Real Decreto 1065/2007: boe.es
• Spanish tax agency, Modelo 720: sede.agenciatributaria.gob.es
• Spanish tax agency, Modelo 036: sede.agenciatributaria.gob.es

This page is general information, not advice for your case. Your individual situation is checked in the consultation, held in English.