Before anything else: nobody on the map is accused of anything. Residence comes from published sources (interviews, press, club cities, Forbes profiles) and is labelled by reliability; income is the latest public estimate; every figure is an estimate that treats all income as employment income. We compare numbers between tax systems. We do not judge people, and we do not claim to know why anyone lives where they live.
Why: the decision everyone makes without looking at the bill
Every year thousands of Spaniards move abroad and thousands of foreigners move to Spain. Almost none of them start from the tax code. They start from a job offer, a partner, a climate, a school. The tax bill arrives twelve months later, and by then the decision is made. Famous people are no different; they just earn enough for the difference to run into millions, and their addresses are in the newspapers. That makes them the best available illustration of a question every expat should ask before signing anything: where will I be tax resident, and what does that jurisdiction actually take?
That is the whole purpose of the celebrity map. It is not a leaderboard of virtue. It is a way to see, with names you recognise, how much the answer to that question varies.
How: what the map does, and what it deliberately does not
For each of the 338 people we record a city (never an address), the source that places them there, and a reliability label: high for explicit statements or a club city, medium when sources point to two places, low when the picture is unclear. Income comes from Forbes 2025 and 2026, Capology and Spotrac for sports salaries, annual reports for executives. When no credible figure exists, a reference income of €1M is used and flagged.
The engine then applies the 2026 rules of the residence, including the layer most comparisons forget: US federal plus state (California's 13.3% is the difference between Miami and Los Angeles), Swiss federal plus cantonal, Scotland's own schedule, New York City's surcharge, the Isle of Man's optional cap. Spain is computed in Madrid under the general regime, 45% top marginal, with capped employee social security. Special regimes (Beckham, Puerto Rico's Act 60, the Swiss lump sum) are mentioned in each profile but not applied, so everything is compared on the same footing.
What the map does not do is estimate anyone's real bill. Real incomes are a mix of salary, image rights, companies, dividends and capital gains, each with different rules. The map compares systems, using familiar names as the ruler.
What: three lessons, with the names that make them visible
1. Residence is a test you pass or fail, not a box you tick
Spain's rule is mechanical: more than 183 days in the calendar year, or the centre of your economic interests, makes you resident for the whole year. There is no split year. Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz live in Monaco; Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Jannik Sinner and Checo Pérez as well. Monaco has no income tax, so on his Forbes-estimated €30M Alonso pays €0 there; under Madrid's schedule the same income would owe about €14M. Hamilton's €88M would owe about €40M. The lesson for an ordinary mover is not the amount, it is the mechanism: those figures only hold if the days and the centre of life are genuinely there. A Monaco flat with a Madrid life is not Monaco residence; the tax authority counts days, not leases.
2. The passport is not the tax; the regime is
Spain's expatriate regime, the Beckham law, taxes newcomers at 24% up to €600,000 and 47% above, for six years. It is the reason a foreign executive or artist moving to Madrid can pay far less than a Spaniard on the same salary. But since 2015 professional athletes are excluded. That is why Kylian Mbappé (€83M estimated, about €38M in tax), Jude Bellingham and Vinícius Júnior pay Madrid's full 45% schedule, while a French CEO with the same income would pay roughly 47% on the excess but 24% on the first €600,000. Cristiano Ronaldo, on €263M in Riyadh, pays 0% income tax; had he stayed in Spain, the general schedule would take about €119M. The lesson: before moving, check which regime your profession qualifies for, not which country sounds cheap.
3. The cheapest place is not always where you think
The most counter-intuitive result on the map is that several of the world's highest earners already pay more than they would in Madrid. The Weeknd (€262M, Los Angeles) pays about €141M in California: 37% federal, 13.3% state, Medicare and SDI, roughly 54% against Madrid's 45%. Beyoncé, LeBron James and Shohei Ohtani are in the same position. Juan Soto in New York City reaches 53.6%; Drake in Toronto 53.5%; Luis Enrique in Paris 53.6%; Harry Kane in Munich 47.4%; Ed Sheeran in Suffolk 47%. Spain's headline 45% (49% in the Balearics, where Nadal lives, 50% in Catalonia, where Alcaraz's rival Lamine Yamal lives) sits in the middle of the pack, not at the top.
At the other end, Andorra's 10% income tax and 6.5% contribution mean El Rubius pays about €0.24M on his last public estimate of €1.5M, against €0.7M in Madrid; Jorge Martín, the MotoGP champion, about €0.7M against €1.9M. Tyson Fury moved to the Isle of Man, which lets residents cap income tax at £220,000 a year: on €128M that is a 1.2% effective rate. And Bad Bunny, in San Juan, pays Puerto Rico's 33% top rate but no US federal tax, about 35% all-in.
The ones who stay
Just as informative are the people who could live anywhere and live in Spain: Rafa Nadal in Manacor, Carlos Alcaraz in El Palmar, Ibai Llanos in Barcelona (who has said publicly he pays his taxes here), Amancio Ortega in A Coruña, Mbappé, Bellingham and Vinícius in Madrid. The map shows what staying costs relative to Andorra or Monaco, and for most of them it is tens of millions a year. They stay anyway. That is a data point too, and a reminder that the number on the tax line is one input among many, for them and for you.
What an ordinary expat should take from this
- Count your days and your centre of life before you count your savings. Spain decides residence for the whole year.
- Check the regime you actually qualify for. Beckham excludes athletes and requires you not to have been Spanish tax resident in the previous five years; Portugal's NHR is closed; Italy's and Greece's flat taxes cover foreign income only.
- Compare the full stack, not the headline. Federal plus state, cantonal plus communal, city surcharges, caps on social security. California and New York City are dearer than Madrid; Florida, Texas and Nevada are cheaper.
- Run your own number. The same engine that produced the map is in the two-offer comparator and the world net-salary map.
Corrections: if you are one of the people on the map, or represent them, and a residence or figure is wrong or outdated, write to us and we will correct or remove it. Related: static tables in English · the second story: why the country is not the tax rate.