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Take-Home Pay Calculator: Spain

Salary after income tax and social contributions in 15 countries, from each authority's own published rules. Regional tax, pensions and student loans included.

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Spain: two right answers for the same salary

Ask what tax a Spanish salary pays and there are two correct answers. Your payslip withholds a retención, worked out by the tax agency's own published algorithm on a single national scale that takes no account of where you live. Your annual return then charges the real thing: the state scale plus your autonomous community's own scale. The two are deliberately different, and the gap comes back as a refund or a bill each spring. This calculator shows the annual liability, because that is what the year actually costs, and quotes the retención beside it so you can match your payslip.

The community matters. Across the fifteen communities this calculator models, the top regional rate runs from Madrid's 20.50% to Comunitat Valenciana's 29.50%, with Cataluña at 25.50% in between, all on top of the same state scale, so the same salary can differ by hundreds of euro depending on the address. Four territories, Alava, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Navarra, are outside the system entirely: they levy their own IRPF under a separate agreement, and are not modelled here.

Two mechanisms surprise people. The minimo personal y familiar is not subtracted from your income: the scale is applied to your income, applied again to the minimum, and the second figure taken off the first, so the relief is worth the same to a cleaner and to a chief executive. And your contribution group puts a floor under your social security base, so a graduate in group 1 on a low salary contributes on more than they actually earn.

Worked example: EUR 30,000 in Madrid, single, permanent contract

Social security €1,950: 4.70% common contingencies, 1.55% unemployment, 0.10% training and 0.15% for the intergenerational equity mechanism.

After the €2,000 fixed expenses allowance, the base is €26,050. The scales give €2,463 to the state and €2,169.58 to Madrid, each already net of the minimum.

Take-home: €23,417.42 a year, €1,951.45 a month. Your payslip will show a retención of €4,926 at 16.42%, a little more than the €4,632.58 finally due, so expect a refund.

For how the calculation works, the formula behind it and what it leaves out, see the full guide.

Data sources

  • Spain: IRPF state and autonomous scales, social security and the 2026 withholding algorithm

    Effective 2026-01-01 to 2026-12-31 · retrieved 2026-08-29

    The 2026 budget was not approved and 2025's is prorogued, so the year's payroll parameters were legislated by decree instead: Orden PJC/297/2026 sets the contribution bases and rates, Real Decreto 126/2026 the minimum wage of 17,094 euro, and Real Decreto-ley 5/2026 the new work income deduction. The state scale and the withholding scale are unchanged since 2021 and the personal and family minimum since 2015. Spain produces two different figures for the same salary: the payslip withholds a retencion on a single national scale that ignores the autonomous community, while the annual return charges the state scale plus the community's own. Both are computed here; the headline is the annual liability and the retencion is quoted alongside it. Not modelled: the four foral territories, Alava, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Navarra, which levy IRPF under their own Concierto or Convenio with entirely separate tariffs, deductions and withholding tables, and which AEAT does not administer; the employer accident and occupational illness premium, which is a per-activity tariff with no single rate; joint filing, which does not exist in the withholding algorithm at all; disability minimums and the geographic mobility increase; income other than employment income; and Ceuta and Melilla. The 2026 minimum wage is widely reported as free of income tax, and it is, but only through the annual deduction below: a single minimum-wage earner with no children is still above the withholding threshold and has tax deducted every month, then recovers it.

    How we checked these figures

    AEAT publishes no static worked example, only an interactive withholding service, so the engine is pinned to the published algorithm rather than to an oracle: the two-scale subtraction, the 43% cap that binds below 35,200 euro, and the truncation of the withholding rate to two decimals. Both computations were checked independently at 20,000 euro of salary in Madrid, giving a retencion of 1,772.00 at a rate of 8.86% and an annual liability of 1,915.61 before the new deduction, and the engine reproduces both to the cent. Community scales are the AEAT-published tables for tax year 2025, which is the most recent consolidated set: AEAT publishes a year's scales only once that year has closed, so where a community has not legislated a change the same table remains in force, and the tax year of each is recorded so the results can say which they are.

    Current

This calculator in other countries

Each country has its own rates, thresholds and rules, and its own page with the official sources they came from.

CentExact Editorial · Research & verification

Every CentExact calculator is built from the published finance formula, tested against spreadsheet, lender and tax-authority figures, and reviewed when the underlying rates or rules change.

How we build and test our calculators

Figures are estimates derived from published rates and rules, current at the review date shown at the top of this page and taken from the sources listed below. Rates, fees and thresholds change; always confirm current values with the official source before relying on a result.