Case file · British expats & freelancers in Spain

There is a NIFon that receipt.It is not yours, so the IVA is gone.

A Spanish till receipt carries the shop's NIF, not yours, and Hacienda will not accept it. Your gestor does not chase it, they just quietly do not claim it. Photograph one receipt and Catalejo tells you the euros of IVA sitting on it that you cannot have, and which shop to ask. Free, no account.

0%
Standard IVA rate in Spain
0
Receipts in one photo
0
Tax offices, kept apart
Evidence Nº 9218-AScanning…
MERCADONA S.A.
NIF A-4610383423/06/2026 · CARTAGENA
PECHUGA POLLO 500G€5.90€11.80/kg
CAFE MOLIDO NATURAL€4.20PERSONAL
PAPEL A4 500 HOJAS€12.80HMRC ✓AEAT ✓
TINTA EPSON 604 NEGRO€18.40HMRC ✓AEAT ✓
TOTAL€35.40
DEDUCTIBLE (UK & ES)€31.20
Evidence · Filing-ready

Free · No sign-up

What will you actually pay?

If you live in Spain and work for yourself, both countries have an interest in your income. Put your figures in below and see where you stand in each one. Nothing is hidden and you do not need an account.

£

Your profit after business costs, not your turnover.

This matters more than people expect. Each region sets its own half of the income tax.

Spain gives you a real allowance per child. Leaving them out overstates your tax.

🇬🇧

If the UK taxed it

Income Tax
National Insurance
Total
🇪🇸

What Spain asks for

Income tax (IRPF)
Social security (autónomo)
Total

These are estimates for a self-employed autónomo, using 2026 rates, converted at £1 = €1.1736 (reference rate). They assume you have no other income, that you file individually rather than jointly with a spouse, and that you claim no regional deductions. We are software, not your accountant, and we are not registered tax advisers. Always confirm the final figures with a gestor before you file.

Case brief · The expat tax dilemma

Why Standard Accounting Apps Fail British Expats in Spain

If you operate as a UK Sole Trader or Ltd Company while living in Spain (Autónomo), your tax liability spans two jurisdictions. Traditional apps only catalog expenses in a single currency and code under a single country. Catalejo implements the dual-ledger bridge.

The UK HMRC Rules

UK allows deduction of business expenses incurred "wholly and exclusively" for trade. Pre-commencement expenses are deductible up to 7 years. Capital allowances (AIA) let you write off 100% of tech assets in year one.

The Spanish Hacienda Rules

Spain (Agencia Tributaria) requires formal invoices (Factura Completa) with your NIF/NIE. Travel must be strictly documented. Groceries are disallowed. Representación (client food) is capped at 1% of turnover.

The Catalejo Bridge

We handle the reconciliation dynamically. We track if an invoice meets Spanish NIF requirements and flag potential liabilities, while keeping standard HMRC deductions separate. Your accountant gets clean, compliant ledger sheets.

Exhibit A · Intake

Elite Batch Receipt Processor

Upload up to 15 receipts at once. No waiting in line for individual scans to complete. Our parallel processing engine performs OCR text recognition, parses vendors, currencies (GBP, EUR, USD), dates, total values, and extracts tax IDs (NIF) instantly.

  • Extracts complete Spanish NIF from standard tickets
  • Converts currencies using historical exchange rates
  • Identifies missing receipts vs credit card statements
Queue status
mercadona_2306.jpgAnalyzed
1.2 MB
taxi_madrid.pdfAnalyzed
0.8 MB
github_invoice.pdfRunning OCR...
0.4 MB
starbucks_barcelona.jpgWaiting...
2.1 MB
Exhibit B · Dissection

Item-Level Analytics Engine

We don't just dump a flat 50€ expense for a supermarket run. Our AI parses receipts item-by-item. It segregates personal groceries from client representation meals and flags single-item deductibility parameters. Perfect for proving expenses to Spanish tax inspectors.

  • Drill down into individual receipt lines
  • Filter out non-deductible items (alcohol, personal items)
  • Recalculate dual tax percentages on split receipts
Itemized Ledger Breakdown
Amazon Spain (Tech Order)€129.50
1x Logitech MX Master 3S Mouse€89.00
UK Deductible: 100% (Capital AIA)ES Deductible: 100% (Amortization)
1x Dark Roast Coffee Beans (2kg)€40.50
UK Deductible: 0% (HMRC Vice)ES Deductible: 0% (Agencia Personal)
Exhibit C · Interrogation

AI Tax Consultant (with Theme Selectors)

Query your overall business finances in plain English or Spanish. Learn if buying a new camera is deductible, calculate your effective Spanish Autónomo social contributions, or project your UK corporate tax. Toggle between a standard clean interface and a hard-boiled "Detective Noir Theme".

  • Simulates capital expenses and forecasts cash impact
  • Understands tax brackets in both countries (IRPF vs. UK Income Tax)
  • Detective Noir UI features hard-boiled audit notes
🔍 CATALEJO NOIR DETECTIVE AGENTActive Case

"The rain is pounding Madrid tonight. I looked at your numbers. Mercadona files look clean, but you're drowning in Starbucks vice spend. Let's dig in."

🕵️ Case Note: Your Spanish Autónomo quota is set to go up next month based on net yields. I estimate an additional €38/mo liability unless you register €400 of business software deductions immediately.
The deliverable · Gestor pack

Hand your gestor a clean, filing-ready pack

Export a clear Gestor Pack when it is time to file: your transactions grouped by category, NIF-matched where possible, with GBP and EUR conversions and the figures your accountant actually needs. Less back-and-forth, faster filing.

Hacienda Ready (NIF-matched) HMRC Ready (AIA Capital) Beautiful PDF Reports

The honest question

Why this and not the app your bank already gave you?

01

The bank has never seen what you bought

Every budgeting app is built on the bank feed, so every one of them stops at the shop name. Monzo, Fintonic, the spreadsheet, all of them say “Mercadona, €52” and none of them can say more, because €52 is genuinely all the bank was told. The receipt is the only record of the shopping, and until now nobody kept it in a form you could add up.

A Mercadona shop from July: 37 separate lines, read off one photograph.

02

Prices move and you cannot feel it

Food has gone up in Spain and the weekly shop still costs roughly what it used to, because you quietly bought less. That change is invisible at the shop level. It shows up in one place only, which is the price per kilo on the line, and you need the same product on two receipts from two different months to see it.

Broccoli €2.60 a kilo. Burgers €8.80. Garlic €7.40. Read off the paper, not typed in.

03

It admits what it does not know

Import your statement and you have every euro that left the account, with nothing missing. Add receipts for the shops you care about and those lines get broken open. Catalejo matches the two so a shop you scanned and a card payment for the same shop are one purchase, not two, and it shows you plainly how much of your spending it can actually account for.

A switch at the top of the page: everything, only what has a receipt behind it, or only what does not.

You could paste one receipt into a chatbot right now and it would read it, probably well. Ask it in October what you paid for the same chicken in June and it has no idea, because it never kept the June receipt. That is the whole difference. One is a clever answer. The other is a record that builds up.

We are software, not your accountant, and we say so. Catalejo shows its workings, flags anything that needs a human, and never invents a number to look clever. Check the final figures with your gestor before you file.

The retainer · Simple transparent pricing

The prep your gestor would rather not do either

Your gestor is there for the filing and the judgement calls. Sorting a quarter of tickets into line items isn't what you are paying them for, and it isn't what they want to be doing. Catalejo does that part, so what lands on their desk is already itemised, dated and evidenced. The subscription is itself a deductible business expense.

Free Plan

£0/ forever

See where you stand, for nothing. No card, no catch.

  • The full cross-border tax calculator
  • 5 receipts a month, with the price per kilo on every weighed line
  • Import a bank statement and see the whole month
  • Unlimited scans & the always-on AI
  • Filing-ready Gestor Packs
Sign Up Free
Highly Recommended

Expat Pro Plan

£19.99/ month

The always-on AI that knows every line you've spent, plus everything you need to file for less.

  • Ask the AI anything about your own money, all year
  • A running "tax saved, still to claim" total
  • Unlimited scans, item-level, up to 15 at once
  • Filing-ready Gestor Packs (Hacienda & HMRC)
  • Deadline reminders for both countries
Start 14-Day Free Trial

14 days free, cancel anytime. No charge until the trial ends.

Cross-examination

Frequently Asked Questions

I live in Spain but invoice UK companies. Where do I pay tax?

Under the UK-Spain Double Taxation Treaty, if you are a Spanish tax resident (present 183+ days in a calendar year), you are liable to pay tax in Spain on your worldwide income. If you invoice via a UK Ltd company, you pay UK Corporation Tax, but may owe personal tax and Autónomo social contributions in Spain. Catalejo segregates expenses in both ledgers so your accountants in both countries can coordinate correctly.

What is the Gestor Pack?

Spanish accountants (Gestores) require very strict reporting. If you upload plain receipts, they will refuse to deduct them unless they display the vendor NIF (tax identification) and your personal NIF/NIE. The Gestor Pack exports a clean PDF statement grouped by category with NIF codes matched and validated, saving hours of review.

How does the batch receipt processor handle 15 files at once?

You drag and drop up to 15 PDFs or image files. They are processed in parallel using the Gemini multimodal JSON extraction API, which maps out vendor, NIF, date, total amount, taxes, currency, and parses itemized receipt lines.

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