A working guide from Paratus Wealth
Spain: The Decisions, in the Order They Arrive
How to download the Guide, Three Steps
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It take 30 seconds to fill out the form.
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The guide appears on this page straight away. No waiting on an email, no link that expires, nothing to chase.
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If you would like to talk it through, say so in the last box. One of our Senior Partners will get in touch at a time that suits you. If you would rather just read the guide, that is completely fine and we will leave you to it.
Your pension was built under one country's rules and will be drawn under another's. Your income arrives in one currency and is spent in a second. Your estate is now of interest to two tax authorities at the same time. This guide sets out the decisions that follow, in the order they reach you.
Most of what goes wrong here is not a rate. It is a date, and a decision nobody told you was a decision.
The quarter of a UK pension that is tax-free in Britain is fully taxable once you are Spanish resident, and which treatment applies is fixed by where you are resident on the day you take it. From 6 April 2027 most unused UK pension funds are counted as part of your estate for UK inheritance tax, and a UK pension does not stop being a UK asset because you moved. Meanwhile Spain taxes the same estate again, through each beneficiary rather than through the estate, and usually wants paying before anything is released.
None of that is a tax question you answer once. It is a set of planning decisions with dates attached: what you draw, in what order, from which pot, in which currency, and how what is left is arranged. What you decide changes what you keep.
Paratus Wealth exists for exactly this position. We are cross-border financial planners and our work is the planning that sits on top of the tax: how a portfolio is built and held when you are taxed in two countries, when and how income is taken, what currency it arrives in, and how an estate two authorities both look at is arranged.
This guide is the map. The conversation is where it gets applied to you.
What is included
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Your UK pension, and the two decisions that expire. How the tax-free lump sum is treated once you are Spanish resident, with the binding ruling named, and what changes on 6 April 2027 when unused pension funds enter your estate for UK inheritance tax
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Two inheritance tax regimes, one estate. Why leaving the UK does not close your UK file, how long the exposure lasts, and how Spain taxes the same estate at the same time through each beneficiary
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The whole move on one page. Every dated decision on a single spine, each marked still open or already closed
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Where you live in Spain changes the answer. Wealth tax and inheritance tax compared across the communities, including the four whose headline rebate is conditional
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What you have to file, and when. Modelo 720, 721, 210, 100, 714 and the succession deadline, on one calendar
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Your income in two currencies. Which exchange rate applies to what, and why it is not the same answer for income as for assets
What you will find in the guide
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Spain does not recognise the UK's tax-free pension lump sum
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From 6 April 2027 an unused UK pension is counted in your estate for UK inheritance tax, wherever you live
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Leaving the UK does not end your UK inheritance tax exposure for between three and ten years
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Spanish inheritance tax is paid by each beneficiary, not by the estate, and usually before the assets are released
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An unmarried partner can face no allowance at all and a multiplier of up to 2.4
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Where you live in Spain can change an inheritance tax bill more than anything else on this list
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Every figure is dated and names the instrument it comes from
How Paratus Wealth Helps
Almost everyone who comes to us arrived at this the same way: they moved, they got on with life, and somewhere along the way the pension they built in one country stopped fitting the one they live in. It is an easy thing to miss, and a very common one.
We are cross-border financial planners. We do not file your Spanish tax return and we do not draft your will. What we do is the planning around them, and we are used to doing it for people whose lives sit in two places at once.
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Look at what you already hold. If you have a SIPP, a QROPS or an old workplace scheme set up before you moved, we will review whether it still suits someone who now lives, is taxed and will one day be inherited from in Spain, and compare what it costs against what it does
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Plan how and when income is taken. Drawdown order, timing and currency are planning decisions with tax consequences, and the consequences differ once two countries are involved
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Build and manage the investments around that. Portfolio construction for someone taxed in two places is a different exercise from portfolio construction for someone taxed in one
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Look at the estate as one thing. Two regimes, two sets of beneficiaries, and one family. We work with your Spanish and UK professionals rather than replacing them
Speak With Paratus
The guide will tell you what the rules are. It cannot tell you where you stand, because that depends on your pension, your family, your plans, and the dates already behind you.
That is the conversation we are here for. It is unhurried, it happens whenever suits you, by phone or by video, and you will be talking to a Senior Partner of the firm rather than to a call handler.
Most people arrive with two or three things they have been unsure about for a while. Some come away with a clear list of what to look at and in what order. Others come away reassured that what they already put in place still works. Both are a good afternoon's work.
We are here to help. No charge, and no obligation.