The list of celebrities who do not pay their bills with the Treasury is long: from singers like Shakira to actors like Imanol Arias and Ana Duato, youtubers like El Rubius or soccer players like Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Some of the sanctions imposed on these celebrities are millionaires and, in cases such as Shakira, Cristiano Ronaldo or Leo Messi, the Prosecutor’s Office even requests jail.
The reasons why celebrities defraud the Treasury are diverse. Among the main reasons are not notifying the change of tax residence to Spain, creating a company to pay corporate tax when it corresponds to them or not declaring their total income. Most of these cases are resolved by paying the fine to the Treasury, although there are several celebrities who claim they do not have the necessary solvency to pay the fine.
If we delve into history, we will see that the first time the Treasury imposed a million-dollar fine on a celebrity, it was on the singer Lola Flores at the end of the 80s. La Faraona had not presented her income between 1982 and 1985, and the Treasury imposed an inspection. After crossing data and checking the accounts of Lola Flores, the prosecutor requested for her two years and one month in prison, a fine of 96 million pesetas and compensation of 50 million for the State. Hence the singer’s emblematic phrase: “if each Spaniard gave me a peseta, but not me, where they have to give it, perhaps I would get out of debt”.
Lola Flores may have been one of the first, but not the last. In recent years, the Treasury has found itself in the Courts with several celebrities. The most notorious cases have as protagonists two of the soccer players most loved by the fans: Leo Messi, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for defrauding 4.1 million euros obtained from the exploitation of his image rights, between 2007 and 2009 The Court of Barcelona agreed to replace the penalty with a fine of 252,000 euros, considering that he lacked a criminal record and for his “remedial effort”, since he had paid the civil liability and the fine.
For his part, the former Real Madrid player Cristiano Ronaldo had to reach an agreement with the Prosecutor for 19 million euros and a two-year prison sentence to appease the Treasury. Since he also had no criminal record and, in Spain, prison sentences of less than two years are not carried out, he was spared from being behind bars.
In 2022, another singer, but this time pop, would also sit on the bench. Shakira was accused of defrauding 14.5 million euros from the Treasury, pretending not to reside in Spain to pay taxes in a tax haven. The inspection of the one in Barranquilla went through investigating fan accounts of her Facebook groups that tagged her in different places in Barcelona when she was not supposed to be there. The photographic evidence, added to various invoices that the singer had in beauty centers and hairdressers, allowed the Treasury to determine that the singer had spent more than 183 days in Spain. This figure is important, since after that time, any person, whether or not they are Spanish nationals, will have their tax residence in Spain. For now, the Shakira case has been awaiting a new trial to clarify the guilt of the Colombian.
Also in 2022, Rubén Doblas, the youtuber better known as “El Rubius”, was fined 73,000 euros by the Treasury for defrauding the Treasury in 2013. In the case of the famous youtuber, what happened is that Doblas used a company called El Rubius OMG to be taxed through the Corporate Tax, which have lower rates than the Personal Income Tax. In other words, instead of paying taxes in the section that corresponded to a person who receives an amount of income like his, he did so at 25%, well below what he was due. Since the youtuber was the sole partner and administrator of “EL Rubius OMG”, the Treasury considered that he should have paid taxes as an individual, and not as a company.
They are not the only celebrities that the Treasury has brought to the bench: Imanol Arias, Ana Duato, Jorge Javier Vázquez, Belén Esteban, Montserrat Caballe or Rafa Nadal are some of the celebrities persecuted for not correctly declaring their taxes.
Just as there have been celebrities fined by the Treasury, there have also been those who have been able to prove their innocence. This is the case of the former MotoGP rider, Jorge Lorenzo, who has been compensated on two occasions before the Tax Agency, which accused him of having hidden his true tax residence.
The first was in 2021, when he got the jury to dismiss the claims of the Treasury for his personal income tax returns in the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. Now, in 2023, Lorenzo has been forgiven another debt of 11 million. In total, adding settlements and sanctions, Jorge Lorenzo’s victory has allowed him to retain more than 46 million.
