Retraction: Andalucía's ITP Is Not 11%, and the Junta Confirmed No Such Thing

This article has been withdrawn. It was published on 14 June 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 14 June 2026 we published an article headlined "Andalucía ITP Surge: Property Transfer Tax Hits 11% as Madrid Exodus Accelerates". It reported that the Junta de Andalucía "confirmed on June 12, 2026" that ITP "remains at 11% for non-resident acquisitions of resale properties, the highest rate in the country", against a Madrid baseline of 6% "established under Ley 14/2013", and that the Consejería de Hacienda had "issued updated guidance reaffirming the 11% rate for non-residents and 10% for residents on properties exceeding €700,000".

None of that is accurate. No such confirmation and no such guidance were issued. Andalucía's ITP is a flat 7%, it is not the highest in Spain, it does not vary between residents and non-residents, and there is no €700,000 threshold. Ley 14/2013 is the Entrepreneurs Act and sets no ITP rate in Madrid or anywhere else. The "Hacienda sources familiar with the matter" who told us that fiscal reform had stalled indefinitely do not exist — we attributed briefing to unnamed officials on a policy that was never under discussion, because the rate they were discussing was never in force.

There was never an exemption to expire

This is the part worth reading carefully, because the withdrawn article did not just get a rate wrong — it inverted the direction of the only real event underneath it.

Andalucía cut ITP to 7% by Decreto-ley 7/2021 of 27 April 2021. That measure was indeed temporary, with an end-date of 31 December 2021. But it was then made permanent by Ley 5/2021 of 20 October 2021, which replaced the old sliding scale (8% / 9% / 10%) with the single 7% rate in the autonomous tax code. The sunset was removed, not triggered.

So the sequence the article described — a temporary relief running out and rates "reverting" or "snapping back" to a higher standard level — is the opposite of what happened. The higher rates are the ones that were abolished. There is no exemption, no cap, no freeze and no reduced rate with a pending expiry date, and therefore no deadline to close a purchase before. Any reader who accelerated a completion, paid to expedite a notary appointment, or accepted worse terms to beat a date, did so against a deadline that did not exist. We are sorry.

The correct position: ITP in Andalucía is 7%, and it does not expire

Andalucía applies a single flat rate of 7% to the transfer of resale residential property between private parties (Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales), plus 1.2% AJD. New builds are outside ITP entirely and carry 10% IVA + 1.2% AJD.

There is no 11% rate, no 10% rate, no progressive band, no threshold at €600,000, €700,000, €1 million or €2 million, and no different rate for non-resident, non-EU or foreign buyers. Nationality and tax residence do not change the ITP rate. Reduced rates exist but 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 reselling within two years, capped at €500,000.

The full picture, kept current, is in our guide to property taxes in Marbella and Spain.

How this article contradicted our own coverage

Between 23 May and 17 June 2026 this publication ran thirteen separate articles on a supposedly expiring Andalusian ITP relief. They did not describe the same relief. Across those pieces the "current" rate was variously given as 0%, 0.1%, 1.5%, 5.5%, 7% and 8%; the rate it would "revert" to was variously 10% and 11%; and the expiry date was variously 30 June 2026, 1 July 2026, 31 December 2026 and 1 January 2027. The instrument behind it was attributed, in turn, to Decreto 14/2013, Decreto 5/2023, Decreto 189/2023, Decreto-Ley 7/2023, Real Decreto-ley 2/2023, Decreto-Ley 4/2024, Decreto 8/2025 and an unnamed 2022 regional decree.

Those accounts cannot all be true, and in fact none of them is. A set of mutually incompatible versions of the same "story" is the signature of generated text, and it is the clearest evidence that no underlying event existed.

Why this was withdrawn

This article was produced by an automated newsroom pipeline that was instructed to file "a SPECIFIC legal/tax update from the last 2-3 weeks" and to reference "Real Decreto numbers" — while having no news feed and no access to the Boletín Oficial del Estado. Given no story, it composed one, and dressed it in the vocabulary of real institutions: the Junta de Andalucía, the Consejería de Hacienda, the Dirección General de Tributos, the BOE, the Colegio de Registradores. The instrument numbers, the deadlines, the transaction counts and the quoted officials were generated, not reported.

Two structural points, because they are what should have stopped this before publication:

• Spanish tax rules arrive as identifiable instruments with a traceable BOE or

BOJA entry — a ley, a real decreto, a decreto-ley, an orden, or an autonomous-community decreto. The Dirección General de Tributos does not issue numbered "Circulars" at all; it answers taxpayers through consultas vinculantes, cited in the form V1200-26. A numbered "Hacienda Circular" that rewrites a tax rate is not a thing that exists. - Administrative guidance cannot add a requirement the statute does not contain, and cannot apply one retroactively. An article claiming both at once is describing something that could not have happened.

We could find no BOE entry, no BOJA 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 rewritten. Its legal beat no longer reports "news" it cannot source, and all three of our content generators now carry an explicit prohibition on citing any legal instrument outside a verified list, on reporting a rate or deadline as changed, and on attributing statements to tax authorities.

Muse Marbella publishes tax commentary because our clients make eight-figure decisions on it, and that is exactly why a fabricated deadline is not a tolerable error. We would rather carry a visible retraction at this URL than quietly redirect it somewhere flattering.

If you accelerated a completion, restructured a holding, 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 see our guide to property taxes in Marbella and Spain and our Spanish Golden Visa 2026 update. Nothing on this page is tax advice; Spanish tax treatment depends on personal circumstances and should be confirmed with a licensed asesor fiscal.