Withdrawn: This Tax Update Misstated Spanish Property Taxes
This article has been withdrawn. It was published on 4 June 2026 as a wealth-planning guide to Spanish property taxes, and too much of it was wrong to correct line by line. We are leaving this URL in place, with the correction, rather than deleting it — anyone who read or cited the original is entitled to find the retraction where the article used to be.
What the original claimed
- That a buyer who makes a new-build home their main residence can be exempt from IVA, citing an article of the IVA law. There is no such exemption: a new home bought from a developer carries IVA whoever buys it and however it is used.
- That Ley 38/1999 is an "Organic Law on the Spanish Tax System". It is a building-standards law and sets no tax.
- A wealth-tax scale for non-residents, a separate threshold for residents and a worked example. None of them is the statutory position, and the example did not mention the relief that applies in Andalucía.
- That the Beckham Law runs for five years, and that the government was preparing to shorten it and to raise wealth-tax rates. The regime covers the year of arrival and the five that follow, and we cannot trace the proposals to any published source.
- That buying through a company avoids transfer tax, a corporate tax rate that is not the general rate, a threshold for capital gains tax and a deduction for mortgage interest. None of these is the rule.
Why it was withdrawn
A reader who relied on the IVA "exemption" would have under-budgeted a new-build purchase by the whole of the tax, and one who relied on the company route would have expected a saving that does not exist: a company pays the same transfer tax as an individual. The statute references were wrong as well, so the article could not be checked against the law it cited.
The article was produced by an automated pipeline that was asked for a "tax update" while having no access to the Boletín Oficial del Estado. The pipeline's rules now forbid it to cite a legal instrument outside a verified list or to report that a rate, a threshold or a deadline has changed.
What can be relied on
The rates and rules for buying and owning a home here are in our guide to property taxes in Marbella and Spain: IVA and AJD on a new build, ITP on a resale, the Beckham Law and non-resident income tax. Wealth tax has not been abolished; Andalucía relieves it in full through a regional allowance, but the state solidarity tax on large fortunes still applies above its threshold.
Spain's Golden Visa was abolished with effect from 3 April 2025; the residency routes that remain are set out in our Spanish Golden Visa 2026 update. Nothing on this page is tax advice; confirm your own position with a licensed Spanish tax adviser.
If you relied on the withdrawn article, please contact us and we will tell you plainly what we can and cannot source.