Beckham Law with a US LLC or S-corp: how to get paid without losing the regime

If you’re an American moving to Spain with the Beckham Law in mind, chances are your income doesn’t come from a classic employer. It comes from your own company — an LLC that bills your clients, or an S-corp that pays you a W-2 salary plus distributions. It’s the most common setup we see among high-income US profiles, and it’s also where the regime is easiest to lose before you’ve even applied.

The core tension: the regime wants a salary, your LLC produces the opposite

Article 93 of the Spanish income tax law is built around employment income. Ordinary self-employment is excluded, and earning income through a permanent establishment in Spain invalidates the regime (save for the Startup Law’s entrepreneur and qualified-professional routes).

Now look at the default US structure. A single-member LLC is disregarded for tax purposes: its profit is your profit, reported as self-employment income. A multi-member LLC taxed as a partnership works the same way for Spain’s purposes. When you sit in Spain doing the work that generates that profit, Spain doesn’t see a foreign company paying you — it sees a self-employed person running a business from Spain. That is precisely the excluded scenario, with permanent-establishment risk on top (why freelancers don’t qualify).

Why the S-corp changes the picture

An S-corp owner-employee is, formally, an employee: the IRS itself requires you to take reasonable compensation as W-2 wages before distributions. That real salary from a foreign company is what can connect you to the regime’s international-telework route: since the Startup Law, moving to Spain to keep working remotely for a foreign employer is a qualifying cause, and it is presumed satisfied when you hold the digital nomad visa or permit.

So on paper: the S-corp pays a W-2 salary, you telework from Spain for a foreign employer, the nomad visa covers the presumption, Beckham follows. The catch sits in the middle. The foreign employer is you.

What AEAT looks at when the employer is your own company

Neither the UGE (which grants the visa) nor the AEAT (which accepts the regime) is obliged to take the label on your payroll at face value. When the “foreign employer” is a company you own, review concentrates on three things:

• Substance. Does the company have real clients, contracts and operations — or was it interposed to repackage self-employment as salary?
• A market-consistent salary. A token W-2 with the bulk flowing out as distributions invites the question of what you actually live on, and how it should be characterised.
• A genuine employment relationship. Defined duties, remuneration and working arrangements — the ordinary indicators that separate an employee from a self-employed person.

None of this makes the structure impossible; it makes it reviewable, case by case. We’ve covered the nomad visa when the company is your own separately. What we won’t tell you is that it “just works” — nobody can honestly promise that.

Social security: the piece that starts the clock

Where you pay social security isn’t a preference — the US–Spain totalization agreement decides it. Broadly, either you obtain a certificate of coverage keeping you in the US system for a temporary period, or you register with Spanish Social Security.

Both paths share one critical consequence: the 6-month Modelo 149 deadline runs from your Spanish Social Security registration — or from the date of the document that lets you keep your home-country coverage. The deadline is preclusive: file late and there is no regime, however perfect the structure (the deadline, explained).

The fallback: a Spanish SL and a directorship

If the employee-of-your-own-S-corp characterisation looks fragile in your case, the well-trodden alternative is incorporating a Spanish SL and entering the regime as its director — an express statutory route, with no shareholding cap since 2023 (asset-holding entities aside). It brings Spanish corporate and tax obligations, but it avoids arguing about whether you are “really” an employee. We compare it in the self-employed guide.

Structure	How Spain tends to see the income	Fit with the regime
Single-member LLC (disregarded)	Self-employment income	Excluded route; permanent-establishment risk
S-corp with a real W-2 salary	Employment income — if the relationship is genuine	Possible via telework route; higher scrutiny
Spanish SL + directorship	Director’s remuneration	Express statutory route since 2023

The evidence to prepare

• An employment contract with the S-corp: duties, salary, working time, remote work from Spain stated expressly.
• Payroll history and W-2s, plus support for the salary level (market benchmarks for your role).
• Corporate substance: incorporation documents, minutes, client contracts in the company’s name, the company account paying the salary.
• The certificate of coverage or Spanish Social Security registration — dated, because it starts the clock.
• If you pivot to the SL route: incorporation deed and director appointment in place before applying.

Keep the US side in view

Beckham doesn’t switch off the IRS: as a US citizen you keep filing, and FBAR and FATCA reporting continue (the regime removes the Spanish Modelo 720, not any US form). How the FEIE and the Foreign Tax Credit interact with a 24% Spanish rate shapes your final bill — see FEIE vs Foreign Tax Credit under Beckham. And run the numbers first: with 24% up to €600,000 (47% on the excess) but no personal minimums or deductions, the general IRPF regime can be cheaper in some situations.

Where to take this

We went through this ourselves: we moved from the US, hold the regime, and are paid through our own US structure. If your case is a straightforward employee salary, start with the eligibility check. If there’s an LLC or S-corp in the middle — the own-company grey zone — that is exactly what the strategy consultation is for.