Taxes in Spain vs UK: Andalusia Hits 45% at €60,000

Taxes in Spain vs the UK: Andalusia charges 45% on income above €60,000, while the UK stays at 40% until £125,140. Below that line the advantage swings back the other way.

Ask in any expat group whether Spain is cheaper on tax and the answer comes back as a confident yes, usually from someone who has not sat down with their own payslip. Spain does not run a flatter income tax than the UK. It runs a differently shaped one, and the shape punishes the middle.

What the two systems actually look like

Spain taxes income twice over, once nationally and once regionally, and adds the two halves together. Each autonomous community sets its own half. Andalusia’s scale starts at 9.50% and, according to the official scale published by the Junta de Andalucía, reaches its ceiling of 22.50% at €60,000. The state half is 22.50% in the same band. Add them and you get 45%. Above €300,000 the combined rate is 47%.

The UK keeps it simpler. GOV.UK sets the Personal Allowance at £12,570, charges 20% from £12,571 to £50,270, 40% from £50,271 to £125,140 and 45% above that. Spain’s answer to the Personal Allowance is the mínimo del contribuyente, which the Agencia Tributaria puts at €5,550. It is not deducted from your income. Spain works out the tax on your full income, works it out again on the mínimo alone, and subtracts the second figure from the first.

One thing this table deliberately does not do is convert pounds into euros. An exchange rate would be stale within weeks and would make an evergreen comparison look precise in a way it is not. Read each column in its own currency and compare the shape, not the totals.

Income tax in Spain (Andalusia) and the United Kingdom, 2026 figures

Two things stand out once the numbers sit next to each other. The Spanish curve starts higher and climbs faster. Someone on £55,000 in the UK has just entered the 40% band and has another £70,000 of headroom before the top rate. The equivalent earner in Andalusia is already close to the ceiling, and a modest raise pushes them into it. The UK curve, for all the complaints about it, gives the middle a much longer runway.

Where Spain comes out ahead

On the entry rate, marginally. Spain’s first taxed euro in Andalusia costs 19%, the UK’s first taxed pound costs 20%. It is a single point, and the much larger UK allowance more than cancels it out at low incomes. Still, it is the one place where the headline Spanish rate is the lower of the two.

On children. Spain’s mínimo por descendientes gives you €2,400 for a first child, €2,700 for a second, €4,000 for a third and €4,500 from the fourth, plus €2,800 for any child under three. UK income tax has no equivalent relief inside the tax calculation. Child Benefit exists, but it sits outside the income tax system and is clawed back once one parent earns enough.

On the £100,000 trap. Between £100,000 and £125,140 the UK withdraws your Personal Allowance at £1 for every £2 earned, which is why that band is often described as the most expensive stretch of the UK tax system. Spain has no equivalent taper. The Andalusian scale simply keeps climbing in the ordinary way.

On wealth tax, at least on paper. Andalusia has effectively removed it through a bonificación on the tax due. The filing obligation survives once your assets pass €2,000,000, according to the Junta de Andalucía, so you can owe nothing and still be fined. The details are in our guide to the Andalusian wealth tax.

Where Spain costs you more

In the middle of the scale, which is where most people live. Andalusia reaches 45% at €60,000. The UK is still charging 40% at that level and does not reach 45% until £125,140. For a senior engineer, a consultant or a specialist doctor, that gap is the whole story of this article.

On the tax-free minimum. £12,570 against €5,550 is a wide gap even before you account for the structural difference. The UK figure is a genuine allowance taken off your income. The Spanish figure is a credit applied at the bottom rate, which in practice relieves less than an allowance of the same size would.

On investment income. Spain taxes dividends and capital gains at 19% from euro one, rising to 21%, 23%, 27% and 30%. The UK, per GOV.UK, leaves the first £500 of dividends untaxed and then charges 10.75% in the basic band, 35.75% in the higher band and 39.35% above that. A modest portfolio is taxed more heavily in Andalusia, and only a large portfolio brings the two systems back together.

On couples. Neither country has German-style income splitting, but the UK’s Marriage Allowance lets a non-earning spouse transfer £1,260 of allowance, worth up to £252 a year. Spain’s joint assessment reduces the tax base by €3,400 under Article 84.2 of the IRPF law, or €2,150 for a single parent. Which is better depends entirely on your marginal rate, and both are small next to the rate difference above €60,000.

And on the shape of the top end. The UK reaches 45% at £125,140 and stops there. Spain keeps going: 45% from €60,000, then 47% above €300,000. For genuinely high earners the two systems converge again, because the UK additional rate has already bitten while Spain only adds two more points. The pain in Spain is concentrated in the band below that, not at the very top.

Who the move actually pays off for

1. The €45,000 single professional

The difference is small and runs slightly against Spain. Both systems keep this person below their top band, but Andalusia taxes several thousand euros that the UK allowance would have protected. Whether the move works comes down to the cost of living in Andalusia rather than the rate card, and on that measure Andalusia usually wins comfortably.

2. The €80,000 specialist

This is where the move costs money. In Andalusia this income sits above the €60,000 ceiling and attracts the combined 45%. In the UK the same person is still in the 40% band with a long way to go before 45%. If your income is in this range and tax is the deciding factor, check whether you qualify for the Beckham Law before you commit to anything.

3. The retiree living on a pension

Pension income is taxed like any other income in Spain, so the smaller mínimo bites from the start, and it grows by €1,150 at 65 and a further €1,400 at 75. The real question is which country has the right to tax the pension at all, and that depends on the type of pension and the double taxation treaty. Our guide to tax on pensions in Spain walks through it.

Across the three profiles the pattern holds: Spain is kind to small incomes and to families with children, rough on the professional middle, and roughly even again at the very top. Where you sit on that curve matters more than any headline rate.

What overturns the calculation

All of this assumes you are tax resident in Spain. Whether you are is decided by the 183-day rule, and it catches people who assumed a few trips home would keep them out of it. Without Spanish tax residency none of these figures apply to you.

Social security is not in this comparison either. If you go self-employed, the autónomo costs in Spain move the result more than the tax scale does. The regional half of Spanish income tax also differs by community, so the Andalusian scale applies to Andalusia and nowhere else. Reliefs, allowable expenses and regional deductions are left out because they look different from one household to the next. For the mechanics of the Spanish side, see income tax in Spain.

Timing matters more than people expect. Spain taxes the whole calendar year in which you become resident, so an autumn move can pull a full year of UK income, including a bonus or a settlement payment, into the Spanish scale. If a large one-off payment is due, the date of your move is a tax decision.

One more thing that catches people out: Spain and the UK do not run the same tax year. The Spanish year is the calendar year, the British one starts on 6 April. In the year you move, two different tax years overlap, and income can land in a UK year and a Spanish year that only partly cover each other. That overlap is behind most of the unpleasant surprises on a first Spanish tax return.

Run it on your own numbers

A rate comparison is not a budget. What survives the month depends on rent, schooling, insurance and the car, and all four look different in Andalusia. The budget calculator puts your own figures side by side.

One cost lands before your first Spanish tax bill ever does: getting the money here. Until the Spanish account is open, rent, the deposit and the first payment to the gestoría all run on transfers from the UK – and the spread your high-street bank builds into the exchange rate often costs more than a whole month of the tax difference.

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