Invest in Spain. ¿How to do it successfully?.
How to invest in Spain successfully?. In this post of Devesa & Calvo Abogados in Alicante we will analyze the key aspects to achieve it from the legal and fiscal point of view. Because as our experience in advising international investors shows, there are many the aspects to take into account and the legal disciplines involved.
Any investor who plans to invest in Spain must be able to comply properly with regard to the prevention of money laundering. In this regard, our credit institutions have internal compliance departments to verify that foreign natural or legal persons (companies) that want to open a current bank account in Spain comply with all the requirements of Law 20/10, of April 28, prevention of money laundering and prevention of terrorism. In this sense, it will be necessary to prove the origin of the funds that are intended to invest in Spain, the balances of origin and the correlation between said balances and the capacity to generate incomes of the declarant.
Another key aspect to invest successfully in Spain is to analyze properly the most favorable taxation for the operation or activity that the investor wish to execute. And so, it will be necessary to analyze the comparison between investing and operating directly as non-resident person in Spain or a foreign company or doing so through a subsidiary, a branch or a permanent establishment, for example; also analyzing whether or not there is an agreement double international taxation with the country of origin and on what terms.
Within the strategic approach of the investor and in relation to the previous fiscal aspects, we must also take into account if what the international investor wishes to acquire is a specific asset, or a company. Because although it is true that in any case it is more than advisable to make a due diligence report (to analyze possible legal and fiscal contingencies that may affect the price of the operation), when what is acquired is a company, this process is more complex; a totality of rights and obligations is assumed (with consequent risk that hidden liabilities may exist).
Another work that we generally assume for international investors in this context of investments in Spain, is the obtaining for the investor of the so-called «golden visa« or residence permit for investment in Spain, which can be extended to family members and individuals dependent on the applicant investor.
To the analysis with respect to the mentioned key points, there are always many other considerations that require specialized and high value advice services: commercial contracts, administrative law for obtaining the permits or licenses necessary to carry out the activity, having clear the Law in labor and social security matters when the investor needs to hire employees and managers, and other many aspects according to the specific case.
Socio fundador-CEO de Devesa & Calvo Abogados.