Digital nomad visa with your own US company: does the Beckham Law still apply?

You run your work through your own LLC or S-corp, you’re planning the move to Spain on the digital nomad visa, and you’re counting on the Beckham Law’s 24% rate. The honest short answer: the visa can be granted and the regime can apply — but they don’t come as a package, and the track your visa is granted on largely decides the tax outcome.

One move, two procedures

The visa and the tax regime are separate procedures with separate deadlines. The visa or permit (Law 14/2013) is decided by the immigration authorities — the Spanish consulate if you apply from abroad, UGE if you apply from Spain — and governs your right to live and telework from Spain. The impatriate regime (article 93 of the income tax law) is decided by the tax office and requires its own application — Form 149, within 6 months of your Spanish Social Security registration or the paperwork that keeps your US coverage. That deadline is preclusive: a granted visa with a late Form 149 leaves you at the general progressive rates for the whole stay. If the combination is new to you, start with our digital nomad guide and the 6-month deadline explainer.

Employee track vs freelancer track — the fork that decides everything

The nomad visa accepts two profiles: employees of a foreign company, and self-employed professionals with foreign clients. For immigration purposes both get you residence. For tax purposes they are night and day.

The Beckham Law’s remote-work route covers employed work for a foreign employer — and the nomad visa or permit gives you a legal presumption that this condition is met. But the presumption follows the substance of your case, not the visa sticker: it is built for the employee scenario. A visa granted on the freelancer track does not fix the regime’s exclusion of ordinary self-employment — business income earned through your own activity in Spain is precisely what article 93 leaves out, as we explain in the freelancer guide. Plenty of people hold a perfectly valid nomad visa and no possibility of the 24% rate through this route.

The middle case: W-2 employee of your own S-corp

Between those poles sits the most common American setup: you take a W-2 salary from your own S-corp (or an LLC taxed as one), so on paper you are an employee of a foreign company. Is that enough?

It can be — the law does not require the foreign employer to be unrelated to you. But be clear-eyed about two layers of scrutiny:

• At the visa stage, own-business applicants are the group UGE has examined hardest recently: expect questions about the company’s real activity, its history, and whether the employment relationship is genuine rather than built for the application.
• At the tax stage, AEAT can question the employment characterisation itself: whether you are truly an employee, or a self-employed professional wearing a payroll. Substance, a defensible salary structure, and the company’s independent reality all matter.

Nobody can promise this profile works — anyone who does is selling. It is a reviewable, case-by-case structure, and we say that as people who live it: we moved from the US, hold the regime ourselves, and are paid through our own US structure. The details of when an owner’s company holds up are in our LLC and S-corp deep dive.

The choreography that protects you

Own-company cases are won on sequencing and evidence, not arguments:

1. The relationship must pre-date the plan. The visa itself requires an employment relationship of at least 3 months and a company with over a year of real activity — a payroll created the month before you apply reads exactly like what it is.
2. Pin down your Social Security date. The US–Spain totalization agreement decides where contributions are paid; the certificate of coverage or Spanish registration is the document whose date starts the 6-month Form 149 clock.
3. File Form 149 early — even with notifications pending. The visa file, the Social Security file and the tax file move at different speeds. Do not wait for one to finish before starting the next; the tax deadline does not pause for immigration.
4. Keep one coherent story. Contract dates, payroll, arrival, registration: inconsistencies across files are the raw material of rejections.

Where you stand

Your setup	Visa track	Beckham remote-work route
Employee of a third-party US company	Employee	The clean case — presumption applies
W-2 owner-employee of your own S-corp	Employee (own company)	Possible, but the most scrutinised profile; characterisation can be challenged
Freelancer invoicing through an LLC, no payroll	Self-employed	Not through this route — look at the director, ENISA or qualified-professional routes

Two honest footnotes. First, your US filings continue either way — see how the regime interacts with the FEIE and the Foreign Tax Credit. Second, depending on income level and family situation, the general regime can occasionally be the cheaper option — the point of planning is finding out before you commit.

Check your case before you fly

If you’re an employee of a company you don’t own, the path is well trodden — run our eligibility check to confirm the basics. If the “foreign employer” is your own LLC or S-corp, that’s precisely the kind of case that deserves a strategy consultation before the first form is filed: the structure, the sequencing and the evidence need to be right the first time.