Real Case Study: Can a 100% S-Corp Owner Apply for Spain’s Digital Nomad Visa?
You own 100% of a US S-Corporation, you want to move to Spain, and your business isn't something you want to dismantle just to qualify for a visa. Should you apply for the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa as an employee of your own company or as self-employed?
This is exactly the question one of our US clients recently brought to us.
We'll call her Sophia.
Sophia owns 100% of an established US S-Corporation. The company has real clients, an established history and a business identity she wants to preserve. She wants to move to Spain under the Digital Nomad Visa (DNV), but she doesn't want to restructure a successful business unnecessarily nor create unexpected tax problems for her US company.
Her question was essentially:
Can I keep my S-Corp exactly as it is and apply as its employee? Or should Spain treat me as self-employed? And if I become autónoma in Spain, can I keep my S-Corp and continue using it with my existing clients?
There is another layer to the question: the Beckham Law.
If she applies as self-employed, does she lose the possibility of using Spain's special tax regime? Could she instead structure herself as an employee of her S-Corp to access it?
This is a great example of why choosing between the employee and professional routes of the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa isn't just an immigration question.
It implies immigration, Social Security and tax, and those three systems don't always classify the same structure in exactly the same way.
Let's look at the options.
The case: a US founder who owns 100% of her S-Corp
Sophia has an established S-Corporation in the United States.
She owns 100% of it.
The company works with established clients and has built up commercial history and recognition in the US. For that reason, simply shutting down the S-Corp and starting again as an individual freelancer isn't particularly attractive.
She initially considered three possibilities:
Convert the S-Corp into an LLC and apply for the DNV as self-employed using the LLC as proof of self-employment.
Keep the S-Corp in the US and use it as her proof of self-employment. Once her DNV was approved, she would register as autónoma in Spain and invoice her own S-Corp for the professional work she performs from Spain.
Keep the S-Corp and apply as an employee of the company.
At first glance, option three sounds particularly attractive.
An S-Corp owner can receive W-2 wages in the United States. And employees who move to Spain under the Digital Nomad Visa may potentially qualify for Spain's special expatriate tax regime, commonly called the Beckham Law.
But this is where we need to separate three completely different questions.
Can this structure qualify for the DNV?
How will Social Security work?
And does the structure qualify for the Beckham Law?
Getting a "yes" to one does not automatically mean getting a "yes" to the others!
First: can you get a Spanish Digital Nomad Visa if you own your company?
Yes.
Owning your foreign company does not, by itself, prevent you from obtaining the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa.
Spain's international teleworker legislation recognises two broad types of relationship:
an employment relationship, or relación laboral; and
a professional relationship, or relación profesional.
For employees, the work must be performed for companies located outside Spain.
For professionals, up to 20% of the total income coming from their professional activity can be received from companies located in Spain.
The law also requires the foreign company with which the applicant maintains the employment or professional relationship to demonstrate real and continuous activity for at least one year.
So being the shareholder of the company isn't the problem.
The real question is what relationship do you actually have with that company?
When you own 100% of it, that question deserves much more attention than it would for a normal employee with no ownership interest.
Route 1: applying as an employee of your own S-Corp
Sophia’s first question was whether she could simply remain a W-2 employee of Sophia Inc., move to Spain and apply for the DNV under the employee route.
On paper, there are arguments for this.
An S-Corporation is a separate US corporate entity and a shareholder who performs services for it may receive W-2 wages. So this isn't the same situation as a sole proprietor simply deciding to write herself an "employment contract."
But for the Spanish DNV, we don't only look at what the relationship is called in the US.
We need to look at its substance.
Sophia owns 100% of the company. She controls it. She makes its business decisions. There isn't an independent employer on the other side deciding whether to hire, dismiss, supervise or direct her.
That makes the employment route more complex than the classic situation of an employee working remotely for a company they don't own.
It doesn't mean that company ownership automatically makes a DNV impossible. It means we wouldn't recommend building an immigration and tax strategy around the word employee without first checking whether that classification survives Spanish immigration, labour, Social Security and tax analysis.
And Social Security creates another problem.
The Social Security problem for a US owner-employee
Employees applying for the Spanish DNV must address where their Social Security contributions will be paid.
For a regular US employee temporarily working in Spain, the US–Spain Social Security Agreement can sometimes allow the employee to remain within the US system.
Under the agreement, a worker sent by a US employer to work temporarily in Spain can, subject to the conditions of the agreement, remain covered in the United States for a period generally not exceeding 2 years.
The US Social Security Administration can issue a Certificate of Coverage proving which country's system applies.
But a Certificate of Coverage isn't simply something every American DNV applicant is automatically entitled to because the United States has an agreement with Spain.
The working arrangement matters.
And when the employee is also the 100% shareholder and person controlling the employer, we would want the Social Security position confirmed before basing the entire DNV application on the employee route.
If US coverage cannot validly continue, the alternative may involve the foreign company registering for Spanish Social Security purposes and paying the applicable Spanish contributions for its employee in Spain.
For an independent foreign employer, that may simply be an administrative burden.
For a company that is 100% owned, controlled and managed by the person who has now moved to Spain, however, it raises another question:
Where is the company actually being managed?
The hidden issue: what happens to the S-Corp when its owner moves to Spain?
This is the part that can be much more expensive than the visa itself.
Spanish corporate tax law considers an entity resident in Spain if, among other tests, its place of effective management is in Spain, meaning that the direction and control of the company's activities are located here.
So imagine Sophia moves permanently to Barcelona.
She owns 100% of the S-Corp.
She is its director.
She negotiates with clients while being based in Spain.
She makes strategic decisions from Spain.
She performs the company's core revenue-generating work from Spain.
The company may still be incorporated in the United States, have a US bank account and continue filing US tax returns.
But those facts don't make the Spanish corporate-tax question disappear.
There can be a Spanish corporate residence or permanent-establishment analysis once the person running the business is physically operating it from Spain.
This does not mean that moving to Spain automatically turns every foreign company into a Spanish company, nor does registering a foreign employer with Spanish Social Security automatically create a permanent establishment.
But when the sole shareholder, director and key person behind the business relocates to Spain, the corporate tax consequences need to be analysed before deciding that the company should simply "employ" that person from Spain.
This is why we don't look at Sophia’s case and ask only:
“Can UGE approve this?”
We also ask:
“What structure do we want Sophia to be living with after UGE approves it?”
Getting the visa is only the beginning and the immigration part of the story.
Route 2: keeping the S-Corp but applying through the professional route
This brings us to the structure that may make considerably more sense for Sophia’s DNV.
She does not necessarily need to close Sophia Inc.
And she does not necessarily need to convert the S-Corp into an LLC simply because she is moving to Spain.
Instead, we can examine the reality of her business as a self-employed professional.
Sophia owns an established foreign company through which she has been carrying out her professional activity.
That company has real clients.
Those clients have contracts with Sophia’s S-Corp.
There is a traceable history of work, invoices and payments.
Rather than trying to present Sophia as a conventional employee of a company she controls entirely, her DNV can potentially be structured around the professional relationship.
In practice, that means showing UGE the full commercial picture rather than creating an artificial employment relationship.
For example, we could use:
the S-Corp's certificate of registration as proof of Sophia being self-employed (showing you are registered is a requirement when you apply for the DNV as self-employed);
evidence that Sophia owns and controls the company;
evidence that the S-Corp has been active for more than one year;
contracts between the S-Corp and its foreign clients;
the foreign client's corporate registration;
invoices issued to those clients;
bank statements showing the corresponding payments;
evidence of Sophia’s role in providing those services; and
the required evidence that the professional activity can continue remotely from Spain (client’s letters).
The exact documentation depends on the applicant and how their company operates.
The goal is simple: show UGE the real business rather than manufacture a relationship that doesn't reflect it.
Once authorised, Sophia can register appropriately as self-employed in Spain and comply with Spanish Social Security obligations through RETA, which she would pay herself, as all “autónomos” in Spain do.
Should Sophia invoice her own S-Corp from Spain?
This was one of Sophia’s specific questions.
Could Sophia keep Sophia Inc. in the US and then, as Sophia “autónoma in Spain”, invoice Sophia Inc. for the professional services she personally provides?
Potentially, yes, but this is where immigration planning needs to meet tax planning.
From an immigration perspective, the professional route can accommodate a foreign-company structure and a genuine professional activity.
From a tax perspective, however, invoicing a company you own 100% is a related-party transaction.
The remuneration and contractual arrangement therefore need to reflect economic reality and should be reviewed by a Spanish tax advisor alongside the applicant's US accountant.
And there is still a corporate-tax question to consider.
Leaving the company incorporated in the United States does not, by itself, guarantee that Spain will regard all of its activity as remaining outside Spain when its sole owner and decision-maker lives and works here.
This is why we would never tell a founder:
"Just invoice your own LLC or S-Corp and everything stays American."
Immigration may accept the professional structure while the tax consequences still require separate planning.
Does converting the S-Corp into an LLC solve the problem?
Not automatically.
This was another possibility Sophia considered.
But changing the legal form of a successful US business purely for the Spanish visa can create more problems than it solves.
The DNV does not contain a rule saying:
S-Corp = employee. LLC = freelancer.
Spain looks at the actual professional relationship and supporting evidence.
A single-member LLC may make the self-employed nature of the activity easier to understand in some cases, but changing from an S-Corp to an LLC does not simply remove Spanish tax or Social Security obligations.
And if the existing S-Corp has valuable commercial history, contracts and client recognition, destroying that structure solely to make the immigration file look simpler may be unnecessary.
Our preference is normally to start with the business the client actually has, understand it properly, and determine whether we can build a coherent DNV application around that reality.
But what about the Beckham Law?
This is where Sophia’s question becomes particularly interesting.
She asked whether she could structure the S-Corp relationship as employment specifically so that Spain would treat her as an international teleworker eligible for Article 93 of the Spanish Personal Income Tax Law (known by most people as the Beckham Law regime).
First, an important distinction:
The Digital Nomad Visa and Beckham Law are not the same thing and you need to apply for both of them separately.
UGE decides whether you qualify for the residence permit.
The Spanish Tax Agency, AEAT, determines whether you qualify for the special tax regime.
A DNV approval does not automatically give you Beckham Law status.
The Startup Law reforms, Article 93 expressly includes international remote workers and also certain entrepreneurs, professionals and company directors. However, an ordinary freelancer who moves to Spain and registers as autónomo does not automatically qualify for Beckham simply because they obtained the DNV under the professional route.
This creates a genuine trade-off for some company owners.
The professional DNV route may be the cleaner immigration and Social Security solution, while an employment relationship may initially appear more attractive from a tax perspective.
We wouldn't make a major corporate restructuring based only on the headline: “Beckham Law = 24% tax.”
Sophia’s accountant needs to compare the full Spanish and US tax consequences of each viable structure.
For a US citizen in particular, US filing obligations don't disappear when you become Spanish tax resident.
In any case, we would never recommend creating an employment structure that does not reflect the reality of your working relationship simply to access a more favourable tax regime or to make it appear that you meet the DNV requirements when you actually don't.
The Spanish Digital Nomad Visa has become significantly stricter throughout 2026, partly in response to applications where employment or professional relationships were artificially created or documents were structured to make an applicant appear eligible when the underlying requirements were not genuinely met.
At Groovy Relocation, we don't take on this type of case. Our approach is to find the best possible structure within your real circumstances and, where changes are needed, help you genuinely meet the requirements before applying. We don't create artificial relationships or rely on “workarounds” designed solely to get an application approved.
The goal isn't just to build a file that looks good on paper. It's to submit an application that reflects a genuine, compliant working arrangement and can withstand UGE's scrutiny.
So what would we do in Sophia’s case?
We would not start by converting the S-Corp into an LLC.
We would also not automatically present Sophia as a conventional employee simply because her S-Corp pays her W-2 wages.
Instead, our starting point would be:
Keep the established US company and examine the DNV through the professional/self-employed route.
We would document the S-Corp's existence and history, Sophia’s ownership and professional activity, and the underlying relationships with genuine foreign clients.
We would then coordinate the post-approval Spanish autónomo and Social Security registration.
Separately, and this distinction matters, Sophia’s Spanish tax advisor and US accountant should determine how the S-Corp should operate once its sole owner is resident and working from Spain, including related-party remuneration, corporate residence and permanent-establishment risks.
Finally, Beckham Law eligibility should be analysed on its own merits rather than forcing the immigration structure into an artificial employment relationship just to try to obtain Article 93 treatment.
That might sound less exciting than finding a clever loophole.
But the goal isn't to create the cleverest structure on application day.
The goal is to create a structure that still makes sense two years after you move to Spain.
The takeaway for US company owners
If you own an LLC, S-Corp or other US company, don't assume you need to close it before applying for Spain's Digital Nomad Visa.
And don't assume the opposite either: that because your company pays you a W-2 salary, Spain will automatically treat you exactly like an employee of Microsoft or Google.
Company owners sit somewhere more nuanced.
Your ownership percentage, actual role, client relationships, method of payment, Social Security position and the way the company will operate after you move all matter.
The good news is that owning your company does not prevent you from qualifying for the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa.
It simply means the application needs to tell the right story, and that story needs to match the business that actually exists. This applies to all Digital Nomad Visa applications.
Own a US company and considering the Spanish Digital Nomad Visa?
At Groovy Relocation, we work with founders, freelancers, company owners and remote employees applying for Spain's Digital Nomad Visa.
If you're not sure whether your LLC, S-Corp or other company should be presented through the employment or professional route, take our free Digital Nomad Visa eligibility test and you will be able to book a free call with us.
Or, if your structure is more complicated, book a consultation with us directly and we'll review your specific situation before you start changing contracts, companies or payroll arrangements.
The best solution is understanding how Spain will view the business structure you already have and how that structure fits within the immigration framework.
