Selling Property in Spain Tax: What You'll Owe (2026)

Selling a property in Spain triggers capital gains tax, and the buyer withholds a 3% retention from non-resident sellers at completion. This guide sets out how that retention and its Modelo 210 reconciliation work, how the taxable gain is calculated, and which exemptions can reduce it, then hands plusvalia municipal to its own dedicated guide. It closes with a worked example. A Spain-qualified property lawyer can calculate the exact liability on a specific sale.

How much tax do you pay when selling property in Spain?

Your bill depends on residency and the size of the gain: non-residents face a flat capital gains rate collected partly through a 3% retention the buyer withholds at completion, while residents pay progressive savings-income rates on their annual return.

A sale in Spain triggers national capital gains tax, and can also trigger plusvalia municipal, a second tax collected a different way. National capital gains tax is charged on the profit you make, under Ley 35/2006 (IRPF) if you are a Spanish tax resident or Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004 (IRNR) if you are not, and Agencia Tributaria administers both. Plusvalia municipal taxes the rise in the land’s value, but it is optional: only a town hall that has adopted it by ordinance collects it, and it does not reach the foral territories of Pais Vasco and Navarra; the dedicated plusvalia guide covers it in full, and this page only states where it fits into a sale.

Two variables move the capital gains figure most: your residency status, which sets the rate track, and the size of the gain itself, which the next few sections work through in order.

Who has to pay it: are residents and non-residents taxed the same way?

Residents and non-residents pay under two different laws, and the split decides both the rate and how the tax reaches Agencia Tributaria.

A Spanish tax resident declares the gain on their annual Renta return, taxed on the national savings-income scale under LIRPF articles 66 and 76: 19% up to €6,000, 21% up to €50,000, 23% up to €200,000, 27% up to €300,000 and 30% above that. Both halves of that scale, the state half and the regional half, are fixed identically in the same statute, so the rate is the same in every common-regime comunidad autonoma.

A non-resident seller is taxed instead under the Ley del IRNR, at a flat 19% under RDLeg 5/2004 article 25.1.f.3.º, with no split by nationality or by EU/EEA residence. That includes a UK resident: the flat capital-gains rate itself did not change after Brexit, though a UK seller did lose one specific relief, covered under exemptions below. The buyer withholds 3% of the price as an advance payment, reconciled afterwards on Modelo 210.

What is the 3% non-resident retention and how does it work?

The buyer withholds 3%. At completion, the buyer keeps back 3% of the agreed price and pays it to Agencia Tributaria on the seller’s behalf, under RDLeg 5/2004 article 25.2. AEAT’s Modelo 211 instructions set the form and the deadline: the buyer files Modelo 211 and pays over the retention within one month of the transfer date. This is a payment on account of the tax due. It is never the seller’s final bill.

The seller then reconciles the figure on Modelo 210: where the retention withheld is more than the tax actually owed, the seller claims back the excess; where it is less, the seller pays the balance. Confirm the applicable filing window with your specialist before you file.

The retention still applies even when the sale makes no gain at all, because the calculation uses the agreed price. The profit made on the sale plays no part in it. That reconciliation is the only route to a refund on a loss-making sale: a generic online calculator cannot run it against your actual acquisition costs and abatement position, and the worked example and the section below cover that instead.

How is the taxable gain actually calculated?

The taxable gain is the transfer value, minus the acquisition value, minus allowable costs, the same order the worked example below runs. LIRPF article 35.1.b counts the cost of investments and improvements made to the property, plus the expenses and taxes inherent to the acquisition excluding interest, as part of the acquisition value where the buyer paid them; article 35.2 lets the seller deduct the expenses and taxes inherent to the sale from the transfer value in the same way. Ask your specialist to confirm which of your own notary, agency and improvement costs qualify under those articles before you estimate your own gain.

Property bought before 31 December 1994 can still get a further reduction, the coeficientes de abatimiento, under LIRPF’s ninth transitional provision. It is a genuinely complex calculation: it reduces only the portion of the gain generated before 20 January 2006, by a fixed percentage for each year held before 31 December 1996 beyond the first two, and the whole benefit is capped at €400,000 of cumulative transfer value across everything a taxpayer has sold under this provision since 2015. Ask your adviser to run it against your own dates.

The current law carries no inflation-correction coefficient of any kind: article 35 defines the acquisition value with no adjustment for inflation between the purchase date and the sale date.

How much would you actually owe? A worked example

This walkthrough is hypothetical. It runs the calculation order for a non-resident seller and describes no real transaction.

The order is fixed: sale price, minus acquisition price and allowable costs, gives the gain; the gain, multiplied by the applicable rate, gives the tax due; the 3% already withheld at completion is then subtracted, leaving the balance owed or refundable. Take a non-resident seller who sells for €300,000 an apartment bought for €200,000, with €10,000 of allowable acquisition and sale costs documented.

Change the acquisition price, the allowable costs or the residency track, and every figure below it moves. A resident seller runs the same gain through the progressive scale above, with no 3% retention to subtract at all.

Get your Spanish property-sale tax liability calculated

You have just seen the calculation order. What a generic calculator cannot do is run it against your own acquisition costs, any pre-1994 abatement your purchase date qualifies for, and the exemptions covered next, all at once.

Your property lawyer takes your actual sale price, acquisition history and residency status and works out the figure the worked example above only illustrates.

What exemptions or reliefs can reduce or remove the tax?

Three reliefs exist for residents, and only one has a confirmed non-resident equivalent.

For a Spanish tax resident, LIRPF article 38.1 excludes the gain from tax when the full proceeds of selling a habitual residence are reinvested in a new one; a partial reinvestment excludes only the proportional part of the gain. Article 33.4.b exempts a habitual-residence sale unconditionally for a taxpayer over 65, with no reinvestment required at all. A third relief, article 38.3, covers any asset a taxpayer over 65 sells, provided the proceeds go into a life annuity within six months, capped at €240,000.

Non-residents can reach one of the three reliefs, and only if their own country of residence qualifies. RDLeg 5/2004’s seventh additional provision grants the same main-home reinvestment exemption to a non-resident who lives in an EU member state, and its fourth paragraph extends it to a resident of an EEA state with an effective exchange of tax information; nobody outside the EU or EEA can reach it. The 3% retention is still withheld at completion even when the exemption applies. The seller reclaims the relief through the Modelo 210 reconciliation afterwards, unless the reinvestment is already made by the time the return falls due, in which case it can be taken into account when the return is filed. UK sellers lost this route for income accrued from 1 January 2021 onward, according to Agencia Tributaria’s own Brexit guidance, so a US, Canadian or post-Brexit UK seller cannot use it. Confirm any non-resident claim to an over-65 relief before relying on it.

What is plusvalia municipal and how does it apply when you sell?

Plusvalia municipal can be a second, separate tax, and it is not covered in full on this page. It is a direct municipal tax on the rise in the land’s value at transfer, charged by the town hall, under Real Decreto Legislativo 2/2004 articles 104.1 and 104.2, but it is an optional tax that only a town hall which has adopted it by ordinance collects, under article 59.2, and it does not reach the foral territories of Pais Vasco and Navarra.

On an ordinary sale, the seller is the taxpayer. The buyer takes their place as substitute taxpayer under article 106.2 whenever the seller is a non-resident individual specifically; a non-resident company selling the same property stays the taxpayer itself. The plusvalia municipal guide covers the rate, the calculation method and the filing deadline in full.

What other costs come out of the sale?

Several separate items make up what comes off a Spanish sale.

Estate-agent commission is market-set, with no statutory scale behind it, so get a fixed quote before you list. Two further debts attach to the property itself as well as to you as the seller. A buyer of a flat under the horizontal-property regime answers with the property itself for unpaid community fees, capped at the current year plus the three preceding years, under Ley 49/1960 article 9.1.e, so the seller must produce a debt certificate before the notary can authorise the deed, unless the buyer expressly waives it. The property is also charged with any unpaid IBI on a change of ownership, under Real Decreto Legislativo 2/2004 article 64.1. Property taxes in Spain covers the ongoing costs of owning the property, including IBI itself, in full.

Can you sell a property in Spain remotely, without travelling?

Yes, by granting power of attorney to a Spanish lawyer who signs at completion on your behalf. A foreign seller can grant that power before a Spanish notary, at a Spanish consulate, or before a notary in their home country, according to the Consejo General del Notariado. A power signed before a foreign notary needs one further administrative step: legalizacion, also called an apostille, counted by the source as a single requirement.

Granting power of attorney for the completion covers the process itself in full, including what the document needs to say to cover a sale specifically.

What if you’re selling a property you inherited?

What counts as your acquisition value, the figure subtracted from the sale price in the calculation above, may work differently for a property you inherited than for one you bought yourself. Confirm the acquisition-value basis with your specialist before you estimate your own gain, because getting this figure wrong changes the tax due by a large margin either way.

What does it cost to get help selling a property in Spain?

Professional service terms depend on the work required for the sale.

Talk to a Spain-qualified property lawyer about selling

The property-law team can advise on the sale, the 3% retention and the Modelo 210 reconciliation. Confirm the scope and filing responsibilities for your engagement.