Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

VISAS

What’s the income requirement for Spain’s digital nomad visa and will it go up in 2024?

Spain’s DNV became available for the first time earlier this year, but there's still a lot of confusion about the financial requirements and many media outlets are reporting incorrect amounts. There's also a big chance the threshold will increase in 2024.

Published: 12 December 2023 09:33 CET
What's the income requirement for Spain's digital nomad visa and will it go up in 2024?
What's the income requirement for Spain's digital nomad visa and will it go up in 2024? Photo: Helen Lopes / Pexels

READ FIRST: New 2024 income requirement for Spain’s Digital Nomad Visa confirmed

Spain’s DNV is also referred to as visado de teletrabajador de carácter internacional on most of the official websites in Spain, so this is what you’ll need to search for when researching. 

So, what is the Spanish DNV’s true income requirement, how much do you actually need to earn per month in order to be able to get Spain’s DNV?

Firstly, the UGE (Unidad de Grandes Empresas y Colectivos Estratégicos) the body that deals with these visas and the one you apply to states that you need to prove you have monthly earnings of at least 200 percent of the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI), or minimum wage.

READ ALSO – LISTED: All the documents you need for Spain’s digital nomad visa

Official government sources state that Spain’s minimum wage is currently €1,080.

However, here’s where much of the confusion comes in – this is the amount across 14 payments rather than 12. It is standard for many companies in Spain to pay their employees 14 times a year rather than just once per month or 12 times. 

If you take the minimum wage amount across 12 payments, it equates to €1,260 per month.

This means that you must be able to prove that you will have an income that’s 200 percent of this amount to obtain Spain’s digital nomad visa. This equals €2,520 per month or €30,240 per year.

If you’re applying for yourself and your partner, you will need to prove you earn an extra 75 percent of the SMI. This currently equates to an extra €945 per month on top of the €2,520 just for you.

For each additional family member after this, such as children, you will have to prove you have an extra 25 percent of the SMI, which is an extra €315 per month.

If you are an employee and a remote worker, you should be able to prove this via your contract, which you will submit along with your application.  

If you are self-employed, like many on the DNV will be, it’s likely you won’t have fixed earnings each month and your income will fluctuate. In this case, you can prove this amount either with several job contracts, invoices, bank statements or tax returns.

If you earn different amounts, many nomads have stated that they have submitted invoices for the last three months or more and the authorities have taken the average to check if it’s over €2,520 per month.

READ ALSO: Is Spain’s digital nomad visa still worth it?

Will the monthly requirement for the DNV go up in 2024?

Spain’s SMI is set for another rise in 2024 and experts predict that this will most likely happen from January.

While the exact amount hasn’t been finalised yet and the government still has to approve the rise, the Ministry of Labour has proposed it should be raised by four percent.

This would result in the amount going up to €1,123.20 per month across fourteen payments, compared to the current €1,080.

When split up between the 12 payments that many from other countries are used to, this will equate to €1,310.40 per month. 200 percent of this amount equals €2620.80 per month, which is what those applying for the DNV in 2024 would need if SMI increases.

READ ALSO: What we know so far about Spain’s next minimum wage increase

This would mean that digital nomads applying next year would need to earn an extra €100.80 per month compared with those who applied in 2023. This is equivalent to earnings of €31,449.60 per year.

It would also mean that the amounts for each family member you want to bring with you will  increase. It would be an extra €982.80 for a partner for example and €327.60 for any more after that such as a child. 

While the exact amount you’ll need to earn to be eligible for the DNV in 2024 remains unknown it’s extremely likely that the amount will go up and that you will have to prove you earn more than anyone who applied this year.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

PROPERTY

REVEALED: Spain’s plan to also clamp down on monthly accommodation

Several Spanish cities have recently declared war on tourist apartments advertised on Airbnb. However, the government now aims to also crack down on temporary rentals, a move set to affect digital nomads and new arrivals.

Published: 2 July 2024 16:29 CEST
REVEALED: Spain's plan to also clamp down on monthly accommodation

In recent months, many places in Spain have tried to curb the number of tourist apartments as a means of lessening their impact on prices in Spain’s long-term rental market for locals and residents. 

Some cities have rolled out a moratorium on issuing new licences, others are making it more difficult to get them and, in Barcelona’s case, there’ve even a new plan to get rid of all Airbnb flats in the next five years.

READ ALSO: Barcelona to get rid of all tourist rental flats ‘by 2028’

Nevertheless, Spanish authorities aren’t stopping there, as the nationals government is also looking at how it can clamp down on monthly or temporary rentals too.

These are essentially rentals that are longer than one month, but under one year. 

Recently, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the government will approve measures “to tackle one of the main problems of our society”, referring to the rise in housing prices.

The crackdown on tourist apartments is part of this, but now the Ministries of Housing and Social Affairs are going to try to prevent what was previously an Airbnb rental from now being camouflaged as monthly or mid-term housing. 

It has also previously been reported that landlords have opted to rent out their properties on a temporary basis to circumvent rent caps introduced by the government on long-term leases.

READ MORE: The loophole landlords in Spain are using to bypass the 3% rent cap

In essence, the middle ground in which temporary accommodation finds itself, the high remuneration it provides landlords and the lack of regulation it is subject to have led the government to deem its role in Spain’s current housing crisis as crucial enough to act upon.

According to national radio station Cadena SER, the government’s plan is to put a stop to temporary rentals, which are also managed through platforms such as Airbnb to try and get around some of the restrictions imposed on them.

READ ALSO: Spain considers banning tourist lets in residential buildings

This means that anyone who wants to temporarily rent their apartment will have to explain why.

For example, if you’re renting to a student or researcher, the government now wants the tenants to have to show the research contract or course booking to show they only last a few months.

There is also a plan in place to get people to register their property on a Ministry of Housing platform so that only those homes that meet licence requirements and justifications can operate in the market.

Currently, many of these homes do not comply with municipal regulations.

READ ALSO: Valencia police pile pressure on tourist flats with more stiff fines 

In the same thread, but as a slightly different plan, junior coalition partners Sumar, as well as other left-wing parties including Esquerra Republicana (ERC), EH Bildu, Podemos and BNG have registered a new bill in parliament to limit seasonal and room rentals to six months and no more.

The primary reason given for the bill is that in the last year there has been a 56 percent increase in seasonal contracts, to the detriment of rental contracts for primary residences. For this reason, they urge Isabel Rodríguez’s Ministry of Housing to understand “housing as a right and not as a market good”.

According to the political parties behind the proposal, this will require a reform of the Urban Leases Law in order to prevent prices from being raised continuously.

Like above, the draft establishes that there must be a justified cause for renting out accommodation temporarily and proof of planned duration.

If this is not justified, “it will be presumed that said contract is for habitual residence,” the draft bill says, stating that it will be the landlord who has to verify whether these circumstances are true and request proof from the tenant.

READ ALSO – UPDATE: Which cities in Spain have new restrictions on tourist rentals?

If more than six months have passed or more than two consecutive contracts have been issued, it will be understood to be a rental contract for a habitual residence and for the long-term. 

It also states that with these temporary contracts, the lessee may withdraw from the lease contract, once at least one month has passed giving 10 days’ notice before leaving.

These two plans are sure to affect a lot of people including digital nomads, those who have newly moved to Spain and want to try out different cities and people who want to rent out their apartments because they want to temporarily spend time back in their home country or go travelling, for example.

And they don’t only affect foreigners, in fact, every summer Spaniards rent or rent out temporary accommodation for the month of August as people escape the cities for the coast or the mountains.

To appease those who are worried about the temporary accommodation clampdown, Rodríguez said: “It is important to guarantee that those who need temporary accommodation can have it, but that it is not used to limit the supply of housing for habitual residence. Let’s try to combat fraud by all means”.

Whether these new draft proposals will pass or ever come into force is a different matter, as there currently seems to be numerous kinks that must be ironed out before any law is enforced on a local or national level.

SHOW COMMENTS