The scale Madrid actually adds
Spanish IRPF on a salary is two scales added together. The state half is the same in every community — six steps from 9.5% to 24.5%, the top one starting at €300,000. The half this page is about is Madrid’s own, and it has five steps: 8.5% up to €13,362, 10.7% to €19,005, 12.8% to €35,426, 17.4% to €57,320, and 20.5% on everything above.
Notice the thresholds do not line up with the state ones: the state’s second step starts at €12,450, Madrid’s at €13,362. There is no clean combined table you can memorise; the calculator merges the two scales bracket by bracket, which is what your marginal rate actually walks through.
Why Madrid comes out lightest
Two mechanical reasons, and neither is a subsidy or a loophole. First, every Madrid step is set below the state step running alongside it. The scale opens at 8.5% where Andalusia and Catalonia open at the state-matching 9.5%. Second, and this is the one that decides real money for relocating professionals: Madrid’s scale stops climbing at 20.5%, reached already at €57,320. The other communities keep adding brackets deep into six figures: Catalonia tops out at 25.5% above €175,000, Valencia at 29.5% above €200,000. On a modest salary the gap is small change. On a senior salary the regional half alone differs by several points of marginal rate, on every euro, every year. That is why the comparison table on this page is worth reading before you sign anything.
Andalusia is the closest chaser; its scale mirrors the state shape with a top of 22.5%. Valencia is the far end of the range among the communities we model.
The scale looks old because it is stable
The scale in force comes from Ley 13/2023 and applies to tax periods from 2023 onwards; it sits consolidated in Decreto Legislativo 1/2010 of the Comunidad de Madrid. AEAT’s own manual currently publishes it as the 2025 scale. That is the manual’s vintage, not a sign the numbers are stale: the consolidated law text carries the same figures unchanged. Madrid has also announced a further cut of half a percentage point across the scale for 2027. Announced is not enacted: it is not law as of our last verification, so neither this page nor the calculator applies it.
A worked example
Take €45,000 gross in Madrid: single, no kids, permanent contract. Employee social security takes €2,925 and the flat employment expenses another €2,000, leaving a taxable base of €40,075. The state scale on that base, after the mínimo credit, comes to about €4,737. Madrid’s scale on the same base, after its own mínimo credit at Madrid’s rates, adds about €4,179. Total IRPF is roughly €8,916, about 19.8% of gross, and around €33,159 reaches your account over the year.
The second of those two tax figures is the only one that moves when you change region in the calculator. The state half, the social security, the mínimo mechanism: all of that is national and travels with you.
What changed in 2026
For Madrid’s half: nothing. The scale has been the same since the 2023 tax year, and the state half is unchanged too. What did move are the national pieces that shape the base before either scale runs: the 2026 social security order set the contribution ceiling at €61,214, the employee MEI rate at 0.15%, and the solidarity contribution brackets on pay above the ceiling. Those land on a Madrid payslip exactly as they do anywhere else in Spain. The genuinely Madrid-specific change on the horizon is the announced 2027 cut, and until it is in the BOE it is a press release, not a rate.