Your first year as an autónomo in Spain: every deadline, and what it really costs
TL;DR
- Three of your four quarterly filings are due on the 20th. The fourth is due on 30 January, and it arrives with the annual IVA summary attached.
- The tarifa plana is not €80 a month in practice. The law that set that figure covered 2023 to 2025 and handed the amount to each year’s national budget from 2026 onwards. No budget has set one, so the old figure persists as a headline while what leaves your account is higher.
- The cheapest year is also the year with the least protection. Anyone on the reduced rate is exempt from contributing for cese de actividad, which means no unemployment cover for those twelve months.
- Remote Work Europe surveyed 407 freelancers registered as autónomo in Spain in September 2026. Three-quarters spend five hours a month or less on this. What they report is not a time problem.
Almost everything written about becoming autónomo in Spain stops at the moment you are registered. The NIE, the modelo 036, the RETA alta, and then the guide ends and then, without a good professional partner, you are on your own with a calendar nobody has explained.
This is that calendar. Every recurring obligation in your first year, in the order it arrives, with the dates that catch people out marked. Remote Work Europe tracks the compliance layer across Europe because it is the part written about least and the part that costs people most, and Spain is the clearest example we have. We publish the same thing for Portugal, and the contrast is instructive.
If you have not registered yet, start with our guide to becoming autónomo in Spain and come back here afterwards.
What does the first year as an autónomo actually cost?
Two separate bills, from two separate authorities, on two separate timetables.
The confusion this causes is specific, and it is expensive. Somebody pays their cuota every month, on time, for a year, and reasonably concludes they have been paying their tax. They have not. They have been paying their social security. Their income tax has not been touched.
Then the quarterly return falls due, and the money is supposed to already be there. In our survey of 407 autónomos in Spain, the quarterly rhythm came up repeatedly as a cash-flow problem rather than an administrative one. One respondent described taking out loans to cover the quarterly bill.
So it is worth being precise about which payment is which.
The cuota goes to the Seguridad Social every month, and it is due whether or not you invoiced anybody. It buys you the contributory side of the system: sick pay, incapacity, parental leave, cover for workplace accidents, cese de actividad in some circumstances, and the years that build towards a retirement pension.
The tax goes to the Agencia Tributaria every three months, and depends on what you earned and what you charged in IVA. This is where public healthcare is funded from, along with education, transport, infrastructure, policing, defence and public administration.
That division catches people out, because the cuota feels like the health payment and it is not. Being registered and up to date is what gives you entitlement to public healthcare. Under article 109 of the Ley General de la Seguridad Social the health service itself is paid for through the regional financing system, out of general taxation. Your cuota buys the right; your taxes pay the bill.
It is also why services vary noticeably between one comunidad autónoma and another. Health and education are largely regional responsibilities, and around half of your income tax goes to the region you live in rather than to the central state.
Neither bill is optional, and neither disappears into a hole. What the contributory side gives back is worth understanding rather than assuming, particularly the pension: fifteen years of contributions is the floor for drawing anything at all, and the relationship between what you pay and what you eventually receive is not a straight line. Our guide to the autónomo pension in Spain sets out what that means in practice.
Nobody sends you a reminder for either.
Since 2023, the cuota has been based on your expected net earnings, which you declare yourself and which put you in one of fifteen contribution bands. For the current figures, see our guide to what autónomos actually pay in 2026, which is kept on a quarterly review cycle. The bands were set for 2026 by Orden PJC/297/2026 of 30 March.
Does any of this change depending on where you live?
Some of it, and it is worth knowing which parts.
The calendar does not change. The filing dates, the modelos and the contribution bands are national. They are the same in Bilbao and in Cádiz.
The amounts do. Each comunidad autónoma sets its own scale for the regional half of income tax and has its own deductions, so two autónomos earning identical amounts in different regions will not owe identical income tax. Wealth tax varies even more sharply, and some regions effectively remove it altogether.
⚠️ Two regions are a different case entirely. Under the Concierto Económico (Ley 12/2002) income tax in the Basque Country is a tributo concertado de normativa autónoma: the Basque territories write their own rules and it is collected by the Diputación Foral, not by the Agencia Tributaria. Navarra has an equivalent arrangement under its Convenio Económico (Ley 28/1990). If you are resident in either, the AEAT calendar above is not the one that applies to you, and you should be reading your own foral hacienda rather than this article.
Is the tarifa plana still €80 a month in 2026?
As a headline rate, yes. As the amount that leaves your bank account, no, and the gap is not an error.
This is worth understanding properly, because every guide in Spain still prints €80 and your first statement will not say €80.
The reduced rate for new autónomos, the cuota reducida, was set at €80 a month by Real Decreto-ley 13/2022. But that instrument set the figure for 2023, 2024 and 2025 only. From 2026 onwards it says the amount is to be fixed by each year’s Ley de Presupuestos Generales del Estado.
No Presupuestos has fixed it. Spain has been running on a prorogued budget, and the provision has simply been left. There is no 2026 figure in law, so the last stated figure carries on being applied in practice.
What has changed is what sits on top of it. The Mecanismo de Equidad Intergeneracional, a surcharge introduced to help fund future pensions, rose for 2026 and is charged on top of the contribution. That is why the amount debited is higher than the number you read about, and it is why the two figures can both be described as correct by people who are talking about different things.
What you have to do to get it
The reduced rate is not applied automatically. These are the conditions, from article 38 ter of Ley 20/2007:
- You must request it when you register. Not afterwards.
- It runs for twelve complete calendar months from the date your alta takes effect.
- You must not have been registered as autónomo in the two years before. If you have had the reduced rate before, that becomes three years.
- A second twelve months is available, but only if your net annual earnings are below the annual minimum wage, and you have to apply for it separately with a declaration. If that second period spans two calendar years, you have to meet the earnings condition in both.
- If you take a baja during the period, the right is extinguished. It does not pause.
What do you give up while you are on the reduced rate?
Your unemployment cover, and a chunk of your pension accrual. Neither is usually mentioned.
Anyone paying the cuota reducida is exempt from contributing for cese de actividad and for formación profesional during those twelve months. Cese de actividad is the closest thing an autónomo has to unemployment benefit. You are not paying for it, so you are not covered by it.
There is a second consequence in the same article. Any benefit you accrue during the reduced period, including pension rights, is calculated on the minimum base of the lowest band of the general table, which is €950.98 a month for 2026. Not on what you actually earn. A cheap first year is a cheap year of pension credit, and our guide to the autónomo pension sets out why that matters more than most people expect.
This is not an argument against taking the reduced rate. Almost everyone should. It is an argument for knowing what the discount is made of.
Can you extend the tarifa plana into a second year?
Sometimes, but only if you earn little enough, and only if you ask. This is the single most commonly missed deadline of the first year, because nothing happens automatically and nobody prompts you.
The reduced rate runs for twelve months from your alta. A second twelve months is available, but two conditions apply:
-
Your net earnings in the first period must have been below the annual minimum wage. For 2026 the SMI is €17,094 a year, which is €1,221 a month across 14 payments, set by Real Decreto 126/2026. If you earned more than that, the extension is not available to you.
⚠️ The SMI is reviewed and raised in most years, and it went up 3.1% for 2026. The 2027 threshold will very probably be a little higher, so check the figure in force at the time rather than working from this one.
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You have to apply for it, before the second period begins. It is a request, with a declaration that your income meets the condition. It is not granted because you qualify. It is granted because you qualify and you asked in time.
Miss the window and you move to the ordinary contribution bands at month thirteen. There is no retrospective fix, and no appeal on the grounds that you did not know.
⚠️ Put the date in your calendar on the day you register, eleven months out, not twelve. That gives you a month to gather the figures and file the request rather than discovering it the week it expires.
If you have an accountant, this is exactly the kind of thing to ask them to diarise for you at the point of alta rather than assuming it is on their list. Ask the question in month one, not month eleven.
When are the autónomo tax deadlines in 2026?
Three of the four quarters are due on the 20th. The fourth is due on the 30th of January.
That single asymmetry is the most common avoidable mistake in the Spanish freelance year. People learn “the 20th”, apply it to the fourth quarter, and file late.
| Quarter | Period covered | Due | What you file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | January to March | 20 April | Modelo 130 and modelo 303 |
| Q2 | April to June | 20 July | Modelo 130 and modelo 303 |
| Q3 | July to September | 20 October | Modelo 130 and modelo 303 |
| Q4 | October to December | 30 January | Modelo 130, modelo 303, and modelo 390 |
Modelo 303 is your IVA return. Modelo 130 is the quarterly instalment of income tax, if you are on estimación directa, which most professionals are. Those on módulos file modelo 131 instead.
If you invoice clients in other EU countries you will also file modelo 349 on the same dates.
📌 Dates are from the Agencia Tributaria’s own 2026 taxpayer calendar. Where a deadline falls at a weekend the date can shift, so check the calendar in the week before rather than relying on any article, including this one.
What else lands during the year?
Three things, none of them quarterly.
Modelo 390, due 30 January. The annual IVA summary for the year just ended. It arrives on the same day as your fourth quarter, which is why January feels heavier than it should.
Modelo 347, due 2 March. A declaration of anybody you did more than a certain volume of business with during the year. It is informational rather than a payment, and it is the one people forget entirely because nothing happens in between.
The renta, from 8 April to 30 June. Your annual income tax return, where the quarterly modelo 130 payments you have already made are set against what you actually owe. If you want to pay by direct debit the window is shorter, closing on 30 June but opening on 6 May.
If you rent an office or pay other professionals, you will also be withholding tax and filing modelo 115 or 111 quarterly, on the same dates as everything else.
What extra forms do you file if you moved to Spain recently?
If you became a Spanish tax resident, you may have reporting obligations that have nothing to do with being an autónomo at all. They catch out migrants specifically, because they are about assets held outside Spain, and nothing in the process of registering as autónomo raises them.
These apply to tax residents, whether or not they are self-employed. Being autónomo does not create them, and not being autónomo does not avoid them.
Modelo 720 – assets held abroad. A declaration of assets located outside Spain, in three separate categories: bank accounts, securities and investments, and property. The reporting threshold is €50,000 within any one category, assessed per category rather than in total. It is informational: it does not itself charge you tax. The filing window is 1 January to 31 March, for the position as at 31 December of the previous year.
Modelo 721 – virtual currencies held abroad. The equivalent declaration for cryptocurrency held on platforms outside Spain, with the same €50,000 threshold and the same 31 March deadline.
Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio – wealth tax. An annual tax on net wealth, filed alongside the renta, by 30 June. This is the one where you live matters enormously: each comunidad autónoma sets its own allowances and reliefs, and some effectively remove the tax altogether while others do not. Two people with identical assets can have completely different answers depending on their region.
📌 The important structural point: once you have filed the 720, you do not file it again every year as a matter of course. It is re-filed when the position changes significantly. That makes it easy to forget entirely, which is precisely why it belongs in a first-year checklist rather than an annual one.
These are areas where the detail genuinely matters and the thresholds are unforgiving, so this is the point to take proper advice rather than work from an article. If you are newly resident and hold anything abroad, raise all three by name with your accountant in your first year, rather than waiting to be asked.
Does it get easier after the first year?
Not according to the people doing it.
In September 2026 Remote Work Europe asked 407 freelancers registered as autónomo in Spain what the experience is actually like. Among those who answered, fewer than one in five agreed that being autónomo had got easier since they started, and that held among people registered ten years as firmly as among those registered one.
What the same survey found is that the burden is not the hours. Three-quarters spend five hours a month or less on admin, because four in five pay somebody else to handle it. What does not go away is the worry: more than three-quarters report a background anxiety about getting something wrong with Hacienda.
So the honest answer about year two is that the calendar stops being unfamiliar and starts being routine, the cuota goes up when the reduced rate ends, and the feeling of not quite knowing where you stand is reported by people a decade in.
One thing that does change: from year two your provisional band is reconciled against what you actually earned, and you either pay the difference or get some back.
Xolo Spain
Xolo Spain handles autónomo registration and the full filing calendar on one platform, in English, including the quarterly modelos and the annual renta.
Remote Work Europe has a partnership with Xolo Spain and we use them ourselves.
Frequently asked questions
When is the fourth quarter due? 30 January, not 20 January. Every other quarter is due on the 20th of the month following the quarter end. The fourth quarter gets ten extra days, and the annual IVA summary is due on the same date.
Is the tarifa plana automatic? No. You have to request it at the moment you register as autónomo. It is not applied for you, and it cannot be backdated.
Do I get unemployment benefit as an autónomo on the reduced rate? No. Anyone paying the cuota reducida is exempt from contributing for cese de actividad during that period, which means no cover for those twelve months.
Can I have the tarifa plana twice? Only after a longer gap. You need two years out of the autónomo regime to qualify the first time, and three years if you have already used the reduced rate once.
Do I file anything if I earned nothing that quarter? Yes. The filings are due whether or not there was activity, and the cuota is charged whether or not you invoiced. This is the single most common complaint we heard in our survey.
Sources
- Real Decreto 126/2026, de 18 de febrero, salario mínimo interprofesional para 2026 – art. 1 (€1,221/month) and art. 3 (annual €17,094)
- Agencia Tributaria, Calendario del contribuyente 2026
- Orden PJC/297/2026, de 30 de marzo (BOE-A-2026-7296), contribution rules for 2026
- Real Decreto-ley 13/2022, de 26 de julio (BOE-A-2022-12482), consolidated
- Ley 20/2007, article 38 ter, as reproduced by the Seguridad Social
- Seguridad Social, Cotización y Recaudación de Trabajadores, RETA section
- Remote Work Europe, The State of Freelancing in Spain 2026, n=407 (publication forthcoming)
