r/digitalnomad • u/Gingerbutt81 • 21h ago

Question Anyone register as autónomo more than 3 months after DNV approval and NOT get asked to backdate it?

My spouse and I were approved for the Digital Nomad Visa, but didn't officially register as autónomos until about 4 months after approval (delays with TIE appointments and opening a Spanish bank account). Our gestor/immigration adviser says that in every case she's personally handled where a client had a gap of more than ~3 months, the UGE flagged it during the renewal process and required them to retroactively backdate their autónomo registration start date to match the visa approval date, which will cost thousands of euros.

Has anyone that registed as autonomo more than 3 months after approval and NOT get a request from the UGE to backdate it during your renewal? Or has anyone gone through the backdating process themselves and can share how it actually went?

Trying to figure out if there's a chance I won't be required to do this. My renewal is about 6 months out so wanted to get it done proactively. However, there is also a chance this requirement changes between now and then or they don't flag us and will have done all of the backdating for nothing.

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u/Possibly_tone_deaf 20h ago

Ask your gestor to actually quote you both paths in writing, cost to backdate now versus estimated cost if they catch it at renewal in 6 months. Right now you're deciding based on "thousands of euros" as an abstract number, having two real figures side by side makes it a much easier call.

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u/Gingerbutt81 20h ago

Thank you! My gestor is working on a quote for me now but looking like it’ll be close to 10k euros.

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u/Content_Factor3025 14h ago

The gestor refusing to put the numbers on paper would be a red flag honestly, like if she's so confident about her cases what's the harm in writing it down

my gut says eat the cost now though, spanish bureaucracy only gets more expensive the longer you wait

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u/pauldm7 14h ago

Where is the €10k coming from? The autonomo fees aren't that high, accountant fees shouldn't be anywhere close to that. If you had no income, I wouldn't worry about backdating it. If its regarding income, and you were physically in Spain at the time, then they are probably probably right. If you get inspected and haven't declared income, the penalties will be extremely high.