Spanish entity setup: need to know

I've just reviewed a client's Spanish entity setup after they'd been operating for six months. Everything looked fine on paper, local advisors, compliant filings, operational bank accounts.

Then we looked at their inter-company agreements. They'd copied their UK template, changed the currency to euros, and assumed job done.

The problem? Spanish authorities don't just check whether you have contracts, they assess whether those contracts reflect genuine commercial logic within Spain's specific regulatory framework.

Most finance teams don't realise this until Hacienda starts asking questions.

Your UK or US templates won't translate directly because Spain evaluates substance differently, not just what your documents say, but whether your commercial arrangements make sense for how Spanish entities actually operate within the broader group structure.

The companies avoiding audit headaches aren't necessarily doing anything more complicated; they're just designing their inter-company architecture with Spanish regulatory expectations built in from day one, not bolted on afterwards.

What assumptions are you making about your Spanish structure based on templates that worked perfectly well elsewhere? #InternationalExpansion #SpanishCompliance #CFO