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In general, when it comes to Spain, you are considered a tax resident of Spain if you fulfill any of the following criteria:
- You stay in Spain for over 183 days in a calendar year
- Your business or economic interests are based in Spain
- or You are also considered a tax resident of Spain if your spouse and/or underage children are tax residents of Spain, unless you can provide evidence that you are a tax resident of another country.
Colombian pop sensation Shakira, who paid Spain €22 million in 2023 to settle a tax fraud case, now claims that the Spanish government engaged in an Inquisition-like criminal proceeding against her.
The singer, whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, was indicted for tax fraud in 2018 on charges that she failed to report income in Spain for tax years 2012–2014. Shakira claimed she was a resident of the Bahamas during those years. In 2023 she agreed to pay €14.5 million in taxes, plus interest, to settle that case and was also fined €7.3 million. Shakira had to pay an additional €432,000 to have a three-year prison sentence suspended by the court. If she had been found guilty, Shakira could have faced eight years in prison and a €23.7 million fine.
In a letter published September 4 by El Mundo, a Madrid-based newspaper, Shakira said she ended up paying more taxes than she owed. “When it really was time to do so, I declared myself a Spanish tax resident and, if you add up all the amounts I paid voluntarily and the unjustified fines, you will see that the Spanish state kept a sum greater than my total earnings from those years,” she said.
The singer said she started spending time in Spain in 2011 because of her romantic involvement with Gerard Piqué, a professional soccer player who later fathered her two sons. Shakira said the relationship, which ended in 2022, caused many complications because it forced her to be away from the countries in which she gave concert performances. “Whenever I returned [to Spain], I did so to prosper that relationship, not because of a ‘vocation to stay,’” she said.
Here’s her full letter translated into English
From the beginning I knew that the Tax Agency’s contrived story confused and manipulated two completely different intentions: one was the desire to settle in a country and another, very different one, the desire for a relationship that was developing in that country to prosper. They exchanged one for the other to make me a tax resident since 2011 and create obligations that did not exist. Now I understand, because I experienced it firsthand, that an institution created to serve citizens should not use all its power and resources to capriciously criminalize whoever suits it , but everyone knows that romance sells well.
In 2011 I wanted my relationship with Gerard Piqué to prosper , who at that time was tied to Spain for work reasons, but travelling to Spain created many complications for me , because it forced me to be away from my work centres. Whenever I returned, I did so to make the relationship prosper, not because of a “vocation to stay”. A strategy that is also underpinned by a sexist prejudice . If the singer had been an American man, had fallen in love with a Spanish woman and had visited her regularly, I find it hard to believe that the Tax Agency would have considered that he had an intention to settle down. There is a structural sexism that takes for granted that a woman can only follow a man, even when it is not convenient for her. A sexism that survives in sectors of the state bureaucracy in a society that – fortunately – already thinks very differently.
Shakira admits that she defrauded the Treasury and accepts a sentence of three years in prison and a fine of more than 7.3 million
Some of the Spanish Tax Agency’s technicians presented a childish and moralistic story in which I was a singer who avoided fulfilling her tax obligations and they were the representatives of justice and decency. The reality was very different: I always fulfilled my obligations. My finances were investigated by institutions as little suspicious as the White House or the IRS and approved by other countries of the European Union, and in all that time they never found even the slightest sign of illegality , while a general director of inspection of the Spanish Tax Agency allowed himself to criminalize me in a television program even before the trial was held . Can we trust that an institution will respect our presumption of innocence when it condemns us publicly before the sentence?
But the Tax Agency does not try to punish those who do not comply, but to show hunting trophies to rebuild a credibility that is in question . And how is that achieved? By intimidating people, threatening them with jail, putting our children’s peace of mind at risk and putting us under pressure to break us. They wanted to make the public believe that I did not pay my taxes, when the truth is that I paid much more than I should have. When I really had to do so, I declared myself a Spanish tax resident and if you add up all the amounts I paid voluntarily and the unjustified fines, you will see that the Spanish State kept a sum greater than my total earnings from those years .
Selcuk Acar/Anadolu
It may seem incomprehensible, but for me the Spanish decade was a financially lost decade, and not because I worked little , as everyone knows. I gave 120 concerts in 90 different cities. How can a person who gives 120 concerts lose money? It sounds strange, I know, but today my assets consist of what I earned before arriving in Spain and what I earned after leaving it. Everything I earned in those years was kept by the Spanish State .
When I decided to live in Spain as an expatriate in 2015, the Tax Agency admitted that I had not been a resident for the previous 10 years, and then immediately tried to charge me for those years. What seemed like a polite way of formalising my situation turned out to be a trap. In the case of 2011, the strategy is particularly scandalous because I only spent 73 days in Spain , when the minimum established by law to be a tax resident is 183 days . A person who spends their time touring the world cannot have the intention of being a tax resident in a place just because the person they are in a relationship with at the time lives there. It would be the same as thinking that a tourist who visits Ibiza on holiday has to become a tax resident just because she has had a local romance.
There may be those who wonder why I am bothering to make these statements now. The first reason is my children. We have lived in an era marked by a tone of arrogance from the State, but bullying is not the same as giving reasons . Intimidating is not the same as convincing people. If they want us to believe in institutions, they should convince us that institutions believe in us. Things are not solved by burning a public figure at the stake every year as if it were an Inquisition trial in order to recover lost prestige .
I want to leave my children the legacy of a woman who explained her reasons calmly and in her own time, when she considered it necessary, not when she was forced to do so. I need them to know that I made the decisions I made to protect them, to be by their side and to get on with my life . Not out of cowardice or guilt. I want them to understand that my love for Spain and my dear Spanish friends and family still endures, but not everything is the same. Sometimes commitment to the truth is more important than one’s own comfort. If at that time I made the decision to make a pact for my children, in this volume I make the decision to speak out, because that is what my conscience asks of me.
The second reason is the need to write my own story. My dear friend Gabriel García Márquez , whom I miss so much, titled his memoirs Living to Tell the Tale . Literature was so important to him that he thought he lived to be able to tell the tale. Well, in a similar way I “tell it to live,” to be able to get my life back, so that no one can write my story for me. Just like with my songs, I sing to live peacefully again, to turn the page .
Sometimes a song wins you a lot of awards and fame, but those aren’t necessarily the most loved songs. The most loved are the ones that help build us up, the ones we secretly turn to when we want to remind ourselves who we are, and also the ones we use to let others know. Well, there’s more truth about me in this little article than in anything published in 2023. The IRS officials who judged me may not be very happy to read it, but frankly, I don’t care. I didn’t write it for them.
His judicial ordeal between 2018 and 2024: an agreement and another case closed
In January 2018, the Tax Agency accused Shakira of tax fraud, considering that between 2012 and 2014 the Colombian singer resided in Spain and, therefore, had to pay taxes here on most of her income generated around the world. The Treasury alleged that in those four years she should have paid personal income tax, which resulted in the accusation of fraud for 14.5 million euros. In 2023, the artist decided to admit the crime before the judge and agreed to pay a fine of more than seven million euros. In May of this year, a judge closed another case against Shakira for defrauding the Treasury of 6.6 million euros in 2018. The second investigation into the singer in Spain, opened in July 2023 , was closed due to lack of evidence. In addition, she has another case pending sentencing from 2011.
