Spain Is Not The UK
When you fall in love with Spain, the chances are you’ll be here on holiday. You’ll be seduced by the weather, the low cost of living, cheaper property.. and over time come around to the idea of living here – possibly at or nearer to, retirement.
If you are coming from the UK, there are some fundamental differences here which you really need to be aware of, before you commit. These are sometimes irksome, sometimes devastating differences which can ruin your life and peace of mind if you aren’t prepared for them. I wish there’d been someone to point out things for me: I’m by no means naive, having run businesses in UK as both a Sole Trader and Limited Company Director, so I did not approach this with rose tinted glasses.
Fundamentally, Spain is not a pro-business country. The taxation authority here is not fair, nor covered by the rules and regulations you’ll be used to in most other EU countries. They make up rules, change rules, levy extra taxes accoring to their own whim. I promise.
I know this makes me sound like some conspiracy theorist ‘the Governments out to get you”: I felt like that when I was thinking of coming here and discounted all the comments as scare stories or disillusioned ‘failures’ looking to make excuses. But, I’m afraid, it is true.
As someone said to me, quite recently, “People don’t come to the Costa del Sol to earn money. They come to spend it: The only way you’ll earn is to provide the grubby, sometimes questionable, sometimes legit-sometimes not- services to those who do have a lot of it: And they’re much more skilled at keeping it than you are at earning it”.
Meaning – a lot of the money here- property, boats, cars, is black money. Cash.
Still, in 2024. Illegally earned, sometimes criminally, and these people are either skilled at skirting the laws or in a few cases downright dangerous to deal with. Are you tough enough?
The Government and the associated services – banks, accountants, gestors ( more of them all later) make a very good income out of milking the honest, those who try and pay their taxes, keep everything above board and do everything legitimately.
Did you know for example, that if the government decides you are behind on your tax, they can freeze all of your bank accounts in Spain? Mine were all frozen, for about 700 euros they said I owed. I didn’t. No matter, my accounts were frozen. I couldn’t access any money to pay bills so everything went into arrears. My bank charged me 200 euro for going overdrawn. In addition, they called me over 20 times in a 24 hour period to make me pay into my account. Harassment? Yep. Legal? Yep. Would that happen in the UK? Never. The idea that Government has the ability to access your accounts, see which ones have money in and freeze them is downright scary.
And there is no ‘banking ombudsman’ here in Spain. They are a crushingly tough money-making business. Don’t think otherwise. I’ll show you how to act accordingly to protect yourself further down the line, once I have made sure this blog is fully anonymous: I did set out to make it a joyful ramble through all things – but when posts like this spring to mind it is best that I stay private!
You can feel like a master criminal, not a small ‘autonomo’ sole trader working with one employee. Sometimes I got scared to open my banking app as so ofen there was far less than I expected, more ‘taxes’ or ‘charges’ had been removed from my account without my consent ! Be warned, and read on. More on these sorry affairs follows soon.