A practical guide to knowing what percentage to set aside from every payment, based on whether your client is Spanish (with or without IRPF withholding) or foreign.
May 2026 · 5 min read · Updated in June 2026
Of every invoice you collect, between 20% and 35% isn't yours. It belongs to Hacienda (the Spanish tax office). The exact figure depends on who you invoice and your tax profile.
If that sentence just took some of the pressure off your chest, keep reading. If it raised it, also.
Most guides tell you "save a percentage when you issue the invoice." That's corporate accounting. You're not a company: you're a person with a checking account, and the money only exists when it lands.
You set aside when you get paid. Not before.
This changes two things:
When you invoice a Spanish company or freelancer, they withhold IRPF (Spanish income tax) directly. What lands in your account is already "clean" of that tax.
The only thing you need to save is the VAT you've collected. Which is usually 21%.
Example: an invoice of 1,000 € + 210 € of VAT − 150 € of IRPF withholding = 1,060 € in your account. Of those 1,060 €, 210 € belong to the tax office (the VAT). You're left with 850 € of operating gross.
Rough reserve: ≈ 20% of what lands in your account.
Here there's no IRPF withholding on your invoice. If you're required to file modelo 130, you pay the advance yourself through that form.
Rough reserve: ≈ 28-32% of what lands in your account. This includes VAT if you charge it, plus a cushion for modelo 130. The 130 is not a 15% invoice withholding: it is 20% of your accumulated net profit (income minus expenses), after subtracting withholdings and previous quarterly payments.
This is the case that surprises people most. You don't charge VAT, nothing is withheld, and the full invoice lands in your account.
Initial feeling: "great, it's all mine." Reality: no foreign client withholds Spanish IRPF for you, so this income counts as non-withheld and can push you into modelo 130.
Rough reserve: ≈ 30-35% of what lands in your account. If you're required to file modelo 130, the payment is based on 20% of accumulated net profit, not a flat 15% of the invoice.
If your client is in the US, LATAM or Asia, this is the easiest thing to forget: the money arrives whole, it looks like yours, and three months later you may owe an advance payment on the profit. Better to know in July than in October.
One rule, repeated over a year:
Every time money comes in, move a percentage to another account. Don't touch that other account until the tax office asks for it.
You don't need a spreadsheet. You need an automatic transfer (if your bank allows it) or three minutes the day after the payment lands.
The rough percentages by client type look like this:
If most of your clients are in the first group, reserving 22% by default leaves you with a small extra cushion. If most are foreign, start around 33% and reconcile it against the real modelo 130 calculation each quarter.
If you save too little, Hacienda doesn't punish you for setting aside badly. It punishes you for not paying on time. The difference shows up in March or July, when modelo 130 or 303 comes around and the numbers don't add up.
If you save too much, the "excess" is a cushion. When the quarter comes around, whatever's left over stays with you. It's savings you'd already mentally put aside: the easiest gift you can give yourself.
In Cece this happens automatically. Every time you mark a payment as received, Cece calculates the actual percentage you need to set aside based on the tax profile of that activity and shows you the exact figure on the Money screen. You don't have to remember whether this invoice was Spanish or foreign, with IRPF or without. Your job is to get paid; the math is on us.
But if you keep your books on a spreadsheet, a notebook, or in your head: with these three percentages you're already covering 95% of cases.
Most likely, after reading this, you'll open your banking app. That's already half the journey.
Cece takes care of what weighs on your day-to-day (projects, payments, proposals, tax calculations) and surfaces the numbers that matter, so they stop weighing on you and you can get back to what counts.
