Retraction: Non-Residents Never Paid 0% ITP, and Those Modelo 720 Penalties Were Struck Down in 2022
This article has been withdrawn. It was published on 10 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 10 June 2026 we published an article headlined "Andalucía ITP Exemption Expires June 30: Non-Resident Buyers Face 11% Jump on Marbella Deals". It reported that "Decreto 5/2023, enacted by the Junta de Andalucía in February 2023 and published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on February 15, reduced ITP to 0% for foreign non-resident property acquisitions as a three-year stimulus measure", expiring 30 June 2026, after which "standard ITP rates under Ley 14/2013 and Real Decreto 1071/2007 resume: 11% for non-residents, 8% for Spanish tax residents".
None of that is accurate. Decreto 5/2023 does not exist; non-resident buyers have never paid 0% ITP in Andalucía; and neither Ley 14/2013 (the Entrepreneurs Act) nor Real Decreto 1071/2007 sets ITP rates — the consolidated ITP text is Real Decreto Legislativo 1/1993. There is no split between an 11% non-resident rate and an 8% resident rate. Spanish transfer tax does not vary by the buyer's nationality or residence at all, and a regional tax that charged foreigners more would be difficult to reconcile with EU free-movement law. The 28 May statement attributed to the Consejería de Hacienda was fabricated.
A second error in the same article: the Modelo 720 penalties
The withdrawn text also told readers that Modelo 720 non-compliance carried "€5,000 per undeclared asset, plus 150% of unpaid tax". That is not merely wrong; it describes a penalty regime that no longer exists and had not existed for four years when we published.
The Court of Justice of the European Union held that regime disproportionate and contrary to EU law in January 2022 (Case C-788/19). Spain removed the fixed per-item fines and the 150% surcharge by Ley 5/2022, the open-ended limitation period went with them, and the Spanish Supreme Court subsequently voided penalties already imposed under it.
The reporting obligation itself remains, and is ordinary: Spanish tax residents declare foreign assets above €50,000 per category on Modelo 720, and virtual currency held on non-Spanish platforms above the same threshold on Modelo 721, filed between 1 January and 31 March. Penalties for late or incorrect filing are now proportionate — of the order of a few hundred euros. Note the obligation falls on Spanish tax residents: a genuine non-resident owning a Marbella property is generally outside both forms entirely, which is the opposite of the withdrawn article's framing.
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.