Retraction: Andalucía Did Not Raise ITP to 11% Under Real Decreto 4/2026
This article has been withdrawn. It was published on 25 May 2026 and it was not accurate. We are leaving this URL in place, with the correction, rather than deleting it or replacing it with unrelated content — anyone who read the original, or who acted on it, is entitled to find the retraction where the article used to be.
What we published, and what was wrong with it
On 25 May 2026 we published an article under the headline "Andalucía ITP Hike to 11% Triggers €3 Billion Costa del Sol Restructuring Wave". It reported that "Real Decreto 4/2026", published in the BOE on 12 May and effective 15 May, had raised transfer tax from 10% to 11% on purchases above €600,000, and described Andalucía's brackets as 8% up to €400,000, 9% to €600,000 and 11% above.
None of that is accurate. Real Decreto 4/2026 does not exist. Andalucía's ITP was not 10% and did not become 11% — it is a flat 7%, and the graduated 8%/9%/10% scale the article described was abolished in 2021. The €180 million revenue projection, the 34% spike in corporate acquisition vehicles and the notaries quoted on background were fabricated.
One point in the withdrawn article was directionally real and is worth keeping straight: Spain does have a general anti-avoidance rule, and the Agencia Tributaria does scrutinise single-asset companies formed shortly before a property transfer. That is longstanding practice, not a response to a 2026 decree, and it does not turn on the invented rate change.
The correct position: ITP in Andalucía is 7%
Andalucía applies a single flat rate of 7% to the transfer of resale residential property between private parties (Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales). The rate was cut to 7% by Decreto-ley 7/2021 of 27 April 2021 and made permanent by Ley 5/2021 of 20 October 2021, which replaced the earlier sliding scale with one rate. It has not changed since.
There is no 11% band. There is no €600,000, €1 million or €2 million threshold at which a higher rate begins, and there is no separate rate for non-resident, non-EU or foreign buyers. Nationality and tax residence do not change the ITP rate you pay. Reduced rates do exist, but they turn on the buyer's personal circumstances and the property's value — broadly, 6% for a home under €150,000, 3.5% for certain buyers under 35, large families, buyers with a recognised disability or purchases in depopulated municipalities, and 2% for registered property professionals buying to resell within two years, capped at €500,000. None of them depend on where the buyer holds a passport.
New-build purchases are outside ITP altogether: they carry 10% IVA plus 1.2% AJD stamp duty.
The full picture, kept current, is in our guide to property taxes in Marbella and Spain.
Why this was withdrawn
This article was produced by an automated newsroom pipeline that was asked to file "a specific story from the last 14 days" without access to any actual news wire. Where it had no story, it composed one, and it dressed the invention in the vocabulary of real institutions — the Dirección General de Tributos, the Agencia Tributaria, the Boletín Oficial del Estado, the Colegio de Registradores. The numbers, the deadlines, the named court cases and the quoted officials in the withdrawn text were generated, not reported.
Two structural points are worth stating plainly, because they are what should have caught this before publication:
- The Dirección General de Tributos does not publish numbered "Circulars" that
rewrite a statute. It answers taxpayers through consultas vinculantes, cited in the form V1200-26. Binding tax rules in Spain arrive as a law, a decree, an order or a BOE-published resolution — each traceable to a dated BOE entry. - Administrative guidance cannot add a requirement that the statute does not contain, and cannot apply one retroactively. Any article claiming both at once is describing something that could not have happened.
We have found no BOE entry, no Junta de Andalucía publication and no professional commentary corresponding to the instrument this article described.
What we are doing about it
The pipeline that produced this article has been reviewed. Muse Marbella publishes tax and legal commentary because our clients make eight-figure decisions on it, and that is precisely why an invented circular is not a tolerable error. We would rather carry a visible retraction at this URL than quietly redirect it somewhere flattering.
If you took a decision, restructured a holding, delayed a completion or paid for advice on the strength of the withdrawn article, please contact us and we will put you in front of a qualified Spanish tax adviser at our expense.
For the current position on Spanish property taxation, see our guide to property taxes in Marbella and Spain and our Spanish Golden Visa 2026 update. Nothing on this page should be relied on as tax advice; Spanish tax treatment depends on personal circumstances and should be confirmed with a licensed asesor fiscal.