Only Madrid is cheap at both ends.
Eight articles in this series took one region each. This one closes the map: all fifteen common-regime scales plus the two foral territories, on one base, with the nine regions we never wrote about verified from the same primary source as the rest. The finding that survived the arithmetic is that “low-tax region” is almost always the wrong question — most regions are cheap at one end of the income range and dear at the other.
This series has published a separate article on Catalonia, Madrid, Valencia, Andalusia, the Basque Country, Navarre, Galicia and the Canary Islands. Nine common-regime regions were left: Aragón, Asturias, the Balearics, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Murcia and La Rioja. They use the same machinery as the ones already covered, so eight more articles would have repeated each other. What they were missing was a place to be compared.
So this is that page. Every scale below comes from the same primary source: the gravamen autonómico chapter of the Agencia Tributaria’s practical manual for the 2025 exercise, which reproduces each region’s consolidated text. Each of the seventeen scales has been checked bracket by bracket against its own published cumulative quota column, and the calculator below was written independently of the published tables and reconciled against them.
One correction to our own earlier work came out of this. The Canary Islands article shipped without a calculator because we could not verify the island thresholds at the time and said so on the page. The manual gives them, so that article now has one.
The general taxable base after the reductions that apply to you — not your gross salary, which is typically a good deal higher. Pick a baseline region and the last column shows what each alternative would cost or save against it on the same number.
The same region is cheap and expensive depending on what you earn
Ranking the seventeen twice — once on a base of 25,000 and once on 300,000 — produces two almost unrelated orders. A region with a low entry rate and a steep upper scale looks generous to a junior salary and punitive to a founder’s dividend. Nothing in the phrase “low-tax region” distinguishes the two cases, which is why the phrase is close to useless.
Rank 1 is the cheapest of the seventeen on that base. Both columns use the same model as the calculator above.
Madrid is the only region that is near the bottom at both ends. It has one of the four lowest entry rates in Spain and the lowest top rate in the country, a full point below the next region. Every other region gives something back somewhere. Navarre and La Rioja are the two extremes of that trade: Navarre is the cheapest jurisdiction in Spain at 25,000 and the fifteenth of seventeen at 300,000; La Rioja is third at 25,000 and sixteenth at 300,000.
The nine regions this series did not write about
Each of these has been verified against the consolidated regional text cited in the last column, and each published cumulative quota column reconciles to the cent. The combined figures add the state scale: 9.5 per cent on the first bracket, 24.5 above 300,000.
| Region | Brackets | Combined entry | Combined top | What is distinctive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aragón | 9 | 19% | 50% | Nine brackets — tied with Extremadura and the Balearics, behind only Valencia — but the steep ones only start above 52,500. Art. 110-1, Decreto Legislativo 1/2005 |
| Asturias | 8 | 18.5% | 50.5% | Eight brackets and a 5.2-point step up to 19.2 per cent at 33,007, the third-sharpest jump in Spain. Amended for the 2025 exercise by Ley 3/2025, published in December 2025 — after the year it applies to had ended. Art. 2, Decreto Legislativo 2/2014 (as amended by Ley 3/2025) |
| Balearic Islands | 9 | 18.5% | 49.25% | Starts its second bracket at 10,000, the lowest second threshold in Spain, then stays mild through the middle. Art. 1, Decreto Legislativo 1/2014 |
| Cantabria | 6 | 18% | 49% | Six brackets, an 8.5 per cent entry rate matching Madrid, and a top that stops at 24.5. Art. 1, Decreto Legislativo 62/2008 |
| Castilla-La Mancha | 5 | 19% | 47% | The state thresholds copied exactly, with the rates nudged. The simplest scale in the country to hold in your head. Art. 13 bis, Ley 8/2013 |
| Castilla y León | 5 | 18.5% | 46% | Five brackets and the second-lowest top rate in Spain. Cheap where it matters for senior salaries. Art. 1, Decreto Legislativo 1/2013 |
| Extremadura | 9 | 17.5% | 49.5% | Spain’s joint-lowest entry rate at 8 per cent, then a 16 per cent third bracket at 20,200. That six-point step is the sharpest single jump in any Spanish scale, and it makes Extremadura the dearest of all seventeen jurisdictions between roughly 42,000 and 91,500. Art. 1, Decreto Legislativo 1/2018 |
| Murcia | 5 | 19% | 47% | Rates set just below the state thresholds it otherwise mirrors, which keeps it in the cheaper half throughout. Art. 2, Decreto Legislativo 1/2010 |
| La Rioja | 8 | 17.5% | 51.5% | Eight brackets spanning 8 to 27 per cent — the widest range of any region bar Valencia. Joint-cheapest entry rate in Spain, and the highest autonomic top rate after Valencia. Art. 31, Ley 10/2017 |
Worth knowing about
- Castilla y León has the second-lowest top rate in Spain at 46 per cent, which matters for director salaries and little else.
- Murcia undercuts the state thresholds it otherwise copies, so it stays in the cheaper half of the table across the whole range.
- The Balearics open their second bracket at 10,000, the lowest in Spain, and stay mild through the middle of the range.
Counterintuitive
- La Rioja is routinely described as low-tax. It has the joint-lowest entry rate in Spain and a 27 per cent top bracket, the steepest autonomic top after Valencia.
- Extremadura starts at 8 per cent and then adds six points at 20,200 — the sharpest jump in any Spanish scale — which makes it the dearest of the seventeen from roughly 42,000 to 91,500.
- Asturias steps 5.2 points to 19.2 per cent at 33,007, and amended its own 2025 scale in December 2025 — after the year it applies to had ended.
What these numbers are, and four things they are not
A comparison table is the easiest thing on a tax page to misread, so it is worth being explicit about the limits of this one.
- The input is a taxable base, not a salary. The general taxable base sits after the employment-income reduction, social security contributions and any other reductions that apply to you. A gross salary of 60,000 produces a base materially below 60,000. Feeding a gross figure into the calculator overstates every bill in the table by the same proportion, so the ranking holds but the euros do not.
- The foral territories are not strictly comparable. The Basque Country and Navarre write their own income tax law rather than adding a regional scale to the state one. Their taxable bases are computed differently and their deductions and credits differ, so placing them in the same ranking is an approximation offered because readers ask for it, not a like-for-like calculation. The two dedicated articles set out where the definitions diverge.
- This is the personal minimum only. The model applies the general personal minimum — 5,550 euro, or Madrid’s own 5,956.65 — and no family circumstances. Children, dependants, disability and age all change the answer, and several regions have their own deductions on top that this table does not attempt to model.
- Income tax is usually not the deciding tax. Across this series the scales turned out to differ far less than the taxes on capital. Inheritance and gift tax, wealth tax and the regional transfer tax on property vary by multiples between regions where the income tax differs by a couple of percentage points. Anyone choosing a region on the strength of this table alone is optimising the smaller number.
One dating point, stated plainly. Fifteen of the seventeen scales here are the ones in force for the 2025 exercise, which is the most recent consolidated set the Agencia Tributaria publishes. Valencia is the exception: it is shown on the scale enacted by Ley 5/2026 in August 2026, because that is what now applies there. Regions amend their scales at the end of the calendar year and occasionally, as Asturias did for 2025, retroactively. Check the date on this page against the year you are actually filing for.
How to actually use this
Three situations account for almost every question we get about regional income tax, and the table answers them differently.
Choosing where to incorporate
Regional income tax is the wrong input. Corporate tax is national, and where the company sits does not fix where you are personally resident. Decide on customers, staff and premises, then read the region you land in.
Already resident, wondering what it costs
Put your real base in and read the row for your region. If the number above or below you is within a few hundred euro, you have your answer: nothing here is worth acting on.
Genuinely able to choose
If the base is above roughly 150,000 and the residence is genuinely movable, the spread is real money. Look at inheritance and wealth tax in the same breath, because those gaps are wider.
Which region has the lowest income tax in Spain?
How much does the region actually change my bill?
Why does my region not match what my payslip suggests?
Can I choose my region for tax purposes?
Why is Valencia shown on a different year to the rest?
Where do the nine new scales come from?
Seventeen jurisdictions, one map. And the income tax was the small number all along.
Talk through your position ↗Alexander Baranov
Seventeen years designing and delivering cross-border corporate structures — incorporation, tax, holding, banking and market entry — for founders and companies expanding into Spain and the EU. Author of professional books on entering the Spanish market.
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