Residency After the Golden Visa in Tenerife
Canary Islands
The investment visa is gone as of 3 April 2025, and in the Canaries the replacement conversation is unusually intertwined with tax. The routes that remain either require economic activity or require independent means, and in both cases how you structure that activity or income here runs into the Canary regime — IGIC instead of IVA, and the incentives under Ley 19/1994.
That makes Tenerife one of the places where the permit and the tax setup genuinely should be decided together. Someone arriving on a self-employment route who registers on mainland assumptions ends up correcting their tax position within a quarter; someone on a passive-income route needs to understand how the islands treat that income before assuming a mainland answer applies.
Local context: Tenerife
| Extranjería office | Oficina de Extranjería de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the province that also covers La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro |
|---|---|
| Island access | Inter-island flights or ferries are part of the calendar for anyone whose file touches another island in the province |
| Company registry | Registro Mercantil de Santa Cruz de Tenerife |
| Local context | Year-round mild weather draws long-stay remote workers, and the island tax rules make the choice between autónomo and an SL a genuinely different calculation from the mainland |
| Indirect tax | IGIC, not mainland IVA, at a lower general rate |
| Tax regime | Régimen Económico y Fiscal de Canarias (Ley 19/1994), including the RIC reserve and the ZEC zone |
| Tax administration | Agencia Tributaria for state taxes; the Canary tax body for IGIC |
| Work authorisation | Granted by the central Oficina de Extranjería |
Sources: Gobierno de Canarias — Tributos · Ley 19/1994 — REF de Canarias (BOE) · Zona Especial Canaria (ZEC) · Agencia Tributaria
What we handle: Residency After the Golden Visa
Spain’s Golden Visa is closed — here are the live alternatives.
- Honest briefing: why the Spanish Golden Visa is closed
- Digital Nomad Visa (remote workers & freelancers)
- Non-Lucrative Visa (NLV) for the financially independent
- Entrepreneur and self-employed routes
Questions about this service
Does the Canary tax regime affect which permit I should apply for?
Indirectly but genuinely. Most routes require you to evidence income or activity, and how that income is structured and taxed here differs from the mainland. It rarely changes which route you qualify for; it frequently changes how you should set yourself up once you have it.
Could a business on the island qualify me under an entrepreneurship route?
Potentially, and the island incentives can strengthen a business plan where the project genuinely operates here — real premises, real employment. What they cannot do is substitute for viability. An application built around the incentives rather than around a working business tends not to survive assessment.
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