Retención IRPF on Invoices: 15 or 7 Percent

If you invoice professional services as an autonomo in Spain, you may have noticed a deduction on some of your invoices that looks confusing at first: the retencion IRPF. It reduces the amount the client actually pays you, and the client sends that difference straight to the tax office on your behalf. The rate is either 15 or 7 percent depending on your situation, and not every autonomo is affected at all. This post explains who has to withhold it, when the reduced rate applies, how it looks on an invoice, and why it disappears entirely for clients based outside Spain.

Retencion IRPF is a tax prepayment on invoices for freelance professional work in Spain. The client deducts it directly from the payment and pays it to the tax office, where it is later offset against the autonomo's own income tax bill.

Who has to withhold retencion IRPF

Whether an invoice carries a retencion IRPF depends on the IAE epigrafe of your activity, which you set when you filled in Modelo 036. The Impuesto sobre Actividades Economicas splits activities into three sections: Seccion 1 for business (empresarial) activities, Seccion 2 for professional (profesional) activities, and Seccion 3 for artistic activities. Only invoices from Seccion 2 and 3 carry a retencion; Seccion 1 activities generally do not. The basics of the autonomo status itself are covered in our guide to working as an autonomo in Spain.

Typical Seccion 2 activities include:

• Consultants, translators and copywriters
• Architects and engineers
• Lawyers, tax advisers and gestores
• Designers and marketing consultants
• IT freelancers, provided they are registered as profesional rather than empresarial

Tradespeople, shop owners, restaurant owners and most online shops fall under Seccion 1 instead and invoice without a retencion. Invoices to private individuals who are not acting as a business or autonomo also carry no retencion, regardless of which section your own activity falls under.

The obligation to withhold only applies to payers with a tax domicile or a permanent establishment in Spain. A company abroad with no Spanish tax presence cannot legally withhold and remit Spanish IRPF, so the deduction disappears completely on those invoices. You invoice clients outside Spain, whether in the EU or further afield, without a retencion. If most of your invoicing goes to clients abroad, you build up little retencion credit and typically prepay your IRPF through the quarterly Modelo 130 instead of through the invoice deduction. Either way your total tax bill is the same, only the timing of payment differs.

15 or 7 percent: the rule for new autonomos

The standard retencion IRPF rate is 15 percent (Art. 101.5 LIRPF). New autonomos pay only 7 percent in the year they register and the two following calendar years, provided they were not already working as a profesional in the year before registering (Art. 95.1 RIRPF).

The reduced rate does not apply automatically. You have to tell your client in writing that you meet the conditions, usually with a line on the invoice itself such as "Retencion reducida segun articulo 101.5 LIRPF por inicio de actividad profesional". Without that note the client applies the full 15 percent, even if you would actually qualify for 7 percent.

An example: if you register as a translator in March 2026, the 7 percent rate applies to invoices from 2026, 2027 and 2028. From 2029 onward you invoice at the standard 15 percent rate, regardless of when in the year you started.

How the retencion shows up on an invoice

The retencion appears as its own line below the IVA amount and is subtracted from the gross total rather than added to it. An invoice for a net fee of 1,000 EUR with 21 percent IVA and 15 percent retencion looks like this:

Item	Amount
Net fee	1,000.00 EUR
plus IVA 21%	+ 210.00 EUR
minus Retencion IRPF 15%	- 150.00 EUR
Invoice total	1,060.00 EUR

The client transfers 1,060 EUR to you instead of the full 1,210 EUR gross. The 150 EUR withheld is remitted to the tax office quarterly through Modelo 111, and the client issues you a certificate at year end. You need that certificado de retenciones for your own tax return, since the retencion already paid is deducted from your IRPF bill there. The rest of what a Spanish invoice must contain, from the invoice number to the IVA breakdown, is covered in our guide to invoicing in Spain.

Saving the Modelo 130: the 70 percent rule

If you find the quarterly IRPF prepayment through Modelo 130 tedious, you can be exempted from it once at least 70 percent of last year's income from the activity already carried a retencion or an ingreso a cuenta (Art. 109 RIRPF). The exemption applies automatically; you do not need to request it separately.

One detail matters here: the 70 percent threshold looks at the previous year, not the current one. If most of your 2026 invoicing carries a retencion, the Modelo 130 only drops away starting in 2027. Check at year end how much of your invoicing carried a retencion before deciding in January whether a new Modelo 130 filing is due.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

Conclusion

Whether an invoice needs a retencion IRPF comes down to the section of your IAE epigrafe: professionals and artists withhold, business activities generally do not. The rate is 15 percent, or 7 percent for new autonomos in their first three years, provided you notify your client in writing. Clients without a Spanish tax presence never withhold anything, and if at least 70 percent of last year's income already carried a retencion, you can skip the quarterly Modelo 130. If you are unsure whether your activity falls under Seccion 2 or whether the 70 percent rule applies to you, it is worth checking once with a gestoria before a wrongly issued invoice causes problems with the tax office.