We thought Shakira’s troubles with Spanish taxes were over, but the global star won her case in one of her many tax disputes: the public treasury will have to reimburse her more than 55 million euros (more than 50 million francs) unduly collected for the year 2011.
The National Court, a court specializing in sensitive cases, thus ordered on April 15 “the restitution of the sums paid, with legal interest” corresponding to the 2011 fiscal year, according to a judicial document consulted Monday by AFP.
Justice thus cancels the adjustments and fines of several million euros imposed by the administration, which considered the artist to be a tax resident in Spain that year.
In a press release sent to AFP, Shakira denounces what she experienced as a “brutal public lynching”. “My greatest wish is that this judgment creates a precedent for the tax authorities and serves the thousands of anonymous people who, every day, are abused and crushed by a system where they are presumed guilty and which forces them to prove their innocence.”
The interpreter of “Hips Don’t Lie” or “Waka Waka” will thus recover more than 55 million, between income tax (more than 24 million), the fine imposed at the time for a “very serious” offense amounting to nearly 25 million euros, the wealth tax for 2011 (2.6 million) and the fine linked to it (2.7 million), to which will be added interest.
Multiple disputes
“The administration has not demonstrated that the complainant had stayed in Spain (…) for more than 183 days”, the threshold beyond which a person is considered a tax resident there, we can read in this decision of April 15, which specifies that “it does not matter whether or not the Bahamas were a tax haven in 2011”.
The administration also suspected her of having used companies domiciled in tax havens.
The 49-year-old singer has had multiple problems with the Spanish tax authorities.
At the heart of these disputes, the question of the tax residence of the singer who had started a relationship in 2011 with the former FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué. From 2011 until 2015, she continued to move around the world because of her career.
Shakira has always claimed to have established herself permanently in Barcelona at the end of 2014, before transferring her tax residence from the Bahamas to Spain in 2015, just before the birth of her second child.
But the Spanish Public Treasury did not see it that way and accused her of not having paid her taxes in Spain in 2012, 2013 and 2014 even though she had lived there for more than 183 days a year in those years.
Sentenced in other proceedings
If this unexpected decision will allow Shakira to receive more than 55 million euros, it does not cancel all the previous procedures already settled over the last two years concerning the fiscal years of 2012, 2013, 2014 as well as 2018.
In 2023, she reached a last minute agreement with the prosecution.
Summoned to court to stand trial, she finally admitted her guilt and thus avoided a trial.
The singer was ordered, as part of this agreement, to pay a fine of more than 7.3 million euros corresponding to “50%” of the amount of the fraud. She had already paid, moreover, 17.45 million euros to the tax authorities to regularize her situation in this case
The tax authorities had also started proceedings for the year 2018 and the artist had to pay 6.6 million euros in regularization for “irregularities” in his 2018 tax return.
This twisted affair even inspired a series called “Celeste”.
Next September, Shakira, who saw her name appear in the “Pandora Papers”, a vast journalistic investigation accusing several hundred personalities of having concealed assets in offshore companies, will perform in concert in Spain for the first time since 2018.
Besides Shakira, many personalities have had problems with the Spanish tax authorities, such as footballers Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, who were also sentenced to fines of several million euros.
