Shakira has issued a strongly worded statement against tax authorities in Spain who, she claims, leaked information and distorted facts about a long running legal dispute over her tax affairs. They did that, she says, in order to send “a threatening message” to other taxpayers in the country.
The singer, full name Shakira Ripoll, was responding to a judgement in Spain’s National High Court. That ruling, her legal team notes, “resoundingly and categorically sides” with Shakira in a dispute over whether or not she was due to pay taxes in Spain in 2011.
The court has “finally set the record straight”, she says in her own statement, “after more than eight years of enduring brutal public targeting, orchestrated campaigns to destroy my reputation, and sleepless nights that ultimately impacted my health and my family’s well-being”.
“Every step of the process was leaked, distorted and amplified”, she goes on, accusing the tax authorities of “using my name and public image to send a threatening message” to other Spanish taxpayers. But today, “that narrative crumbles and it does so with the full force of a court ruling”.
There have been multiple disputes between Spanish tax authorities and Shakira over the alleged underpayment of taxes relating to three different time periods: first 2011, then 2012 to 2014, and finally 2018. In 2023, the singer settled the dispute over taxes due between 2012 and 2014, and then the following year claims in relation to 2018 were dismissed by a Spanish court.
The specific dispute newly ruled upon by the National High Court relates to 2011. Shakira became a full resident, and therefore tax payer, of Spain in 2015, she being in a relationship with Barcelona football player Gerard Piqué at the time. However, the tax authorities claimed she should have been paying taxes in the country prior to becoming a full time resident.
But to be considered a tax resident in Spain you must spend more than 183 days in the country in any one year, and the tax authorities could only demonstrate that Shakira was in Spain for 163 days in 2011.
This was unsurprisingly, a statement from her legal team explains, because, in 2011, “Shakira was on a world tour, performing 120 concerts across 37 different countries”, plus “she had no home in Spain, no children, nor did she ever have her business centre in this country”. And yet the Spanish tax agency sought to tax revenues from that tour.
The subsequent legal battle, attorney José Luis Prada says, was “an eight-year ordeal that has taken an unacceptable toll” and “reflects a highly flawed administrative practice. Shakira had the strength and resources to see this through to the end, but this modus operandi suffocates many ordinary taxpayers who do not have the means to defend themselves”.
Building on this point, Shakira herself adds, “My greatest wish is that this ruling sets a precedent and serves the thousands of ordinary citizens who are abused and crushed every day by a system that presumes their guilt and forces them to prove their innocence at the cost of economic and emotional ruin. This victory is dedicated to them”.
The National High Court has also ordered tax authorities to hand back to Shakira €60 million that they have “improperly withheld” during this dispute, as well interest and compensation for her legal costs.
