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Spanish registration tax

What you pay the first time a vehicle is registered in Spain, and it turns on what the vehicle emits and where, not on its price. It gives the band, the rate in all three territories, whether the vehicle is taxable at all and what deadline runs if you bring it in.

Emissions fix the band (art. 70.1); the region fixes the rate (art. 70.2).
Registration tax
€1,330.00
Band
2nd
Rate applied
4.75 %
Breakdown of the Spanish registration tax
Taxable base (art. 69)€28,000.00
Band (art. 70.1)121 to 159 g/km2nd
Rate (art. 70.2)4.75 %
Tax payable€1,330.00
The same vehicle in all three territories at the State fallback rate
TerritoryRateTax
Mainland and the Balearics4.75 %€1,330.00
Canary Islands3.75 %€1,050.00
Ceuta and Melilla0.00 %€0.00
  • The rate shown is the STATE FALLBACK. Your region may have approved its own, and then that one applies.
Adjustment: your region's rate

Article 70.2.a) applies whatever rate the region approved first. The State table governs only where the region approved none, so the figure above is a fallback and not «the rate».

Emissions are evidenced by the maker's certificate or the vehicle's technical card (art. 70.7). Below 120 g/km the State rate is zero.

Video: how to use the calculator

1

The band comes first, and emissions fix it

Article 70.1 splits vehicles into nine bands. The first four are cars by CO₂: up to 120 g/km, 120 to 160, 160 to 200, and 200 upwards. Bands 6 to 9 are the same ladder for motorcycles, with the steps at 100, 120 and 140 g/km, so identical emissions fall in different bands depending on what you drive: 130 g/km is the second band on a car and the third on a motorcycle. Band 5 catches everything else, from boats to aircraft. A vehicle with a single non-combustion motor sits in band 1 whatever it emits, and a vehicle whose emissions are not evidenced goes to band 4, the dearest one: failing to prove them is not free, it is the most expensive answer available.

2

Then the rate, and the State does not set it

Article 70.2 orders the two sources plainly. Letter a) applies whatever rate the autonomous community approved under article 43 of Law 21/2001. Letter b) enters only «si la Comunidad Autónoma no hubiese aprobado los tipos a que se refiere el párrafo anterior». The State table is, literally, what applies when nobody legislated. That table gives 0, 4.75, 9.75 and 14.75 per cent on the mainland and the Balearics, one point less in the Canaries, and zero in Ceuta and Melilla on every band. That is why this calculator shows all three columns at once and lets you enter your own region’s rate: it is the one figure in this calculation the page cannot know.

3

The base: new is the pre-VAT price, used is market value

Article 69 separates the two. On a new vehicle the base is the one used for VAT. On a used one it is market value at the devengo, and there the law offers a shelter almost nobody explains: the taxpayer may use the average sale prices the Ministry approves, and where they do, «la Administración tributaria no podrá comprobar por los otros medios previstos en el artículo 57 de la Ley General Tributaria el valor así declarado». Declaring at that table buys immunity. Declaring below it opens the opposite: article 71.2 lets the Administration check the base before granting the visado, and that check may take up to sixty days, days in which the car is not registered.

4

Bring it from abroad and the clock starts on the first day you use it

Article 65.1.d) makes the very use of a vehicle in Spain a taxable event once registration has not been applied for within thirty days of first use, extended to sixty for a transfer of residence carrying the article 66.1.n) exemption. If that period passes, article 68.2 puts the devengo on the following day, and apartado sexto of Order EHA/1981/2005 gives fifteen further calendar days to file. Chained, that is forty-six days from the moment the vehicle entered Spain, and not one of the three norms says so: you have to add them up.

5

And if you already paid in Ceuta, Melilla or the Canaries, there is still a balance

The two routes are not the same operation, though they are almost always described together. From Ceuta or Melilla, article 70.4 applies the destination rate multiplied by a coefficient that decays: 1.00 in year one, 0.67 in year two, 0.42 in years three and four. Past four years the article supplies no coefficient, so nothing is assessed. From the Canaries, article 70.5 uses no coefficient at all: it charges the difference between the Canarian rate and the destination one, only inside the first year, and nothing where the Canarian rate applied was not lower. On the same car and the same months, one route can ask fourteen times what the other does.

Worked example

A petrol car homologated at 128 g/km of CO₂ with a taxable base of 28,000 euros falls in band 2, because it passes 120 g/km and does not reach 160. At the State fallback rate that is 4.75 per cent, i.e. 1,330 euros on the mainland and the Balearics. The same car registered in the Canaries pays 3.75 per cent, 1,050 euros, and in Ceuta or Melilla it pays nothing, though form 576 is filed all the same. Had the maker declared 119 g/km instead of 128, the band would be 1 and the tax zero: nine grams are worth 1,330 euros. And if that vehicle had been registered in Melilla and definitively imported to the mainland eighteen months later at a value of 20,000 euros, article 70.4 would apply 4.75 per cent times 0.67, that is 3.1825 per cent, and the bill would be 636.50 euros.

Frequently asked questions

How much is Spanish registration tax?
It turns on two things and neither is the price. The first is official CO₂, which places the vehicle in one of the nine bands of article 70.1. The second is the territory, because article 70.2.a) leaves the rate to each autonomous community. At the State fallback rate a car runs from 0 per cent below 120 g/km to 14.75 per cent from 200 g/km on the mainland and the Balearics.
Who pays it?
Article 67 names as taxpayer «las personas o entidades a cuyo nombre se efectúe la primera matriculación definitiva»: whoever will appear on the registration document, not the dealer and not the previous seller, even though in practice the dealer’s agent usually files the form on the buyer’s behalf.
Does an electric car pay registration tax in Spain?
Article 70.1.1.º b) puts «vehículos provistos de un solo motor que no sea de combustión interna» in band 1, quads excepted. That band carries a zero rate in the State fallback, so a pure electric pays no tax. Form 576 is still filed, because a zero rate is not the same thing as being outside the tax.
What about a plug-in hybrid?
A hybrid has a combustion engine, so it does not enter through the single-motor route: it enters on its emissions. At 120 g/km or below it sits in band 1 and pays nothing; above that it pays whatever its band carries. What decides is not the vehicle’s marketing label but the CO₂ figure on its technical card.
When is form 576 due?
Apartado sexto of Order EHA/1981/2005 gives no date at all, it gives a window between two events: «una vez solicitada la matriculación definitiva del medio de transporte y antes de que la misma se haya producido». Only where the taxable event is not registration (using a foreign vehicle here without registering it in time, for instance) does a deadline in days appear: fifteen calendar days from the devengo.
Do I pay if I bring the car from another EU country?
Yes, unless an exemption applies. What article 65.1.a) taxes is the first definitive registration IN SPAIN, whether the vehicle was built in the EU or imported, new or used. Where it comes with a transfer of residence, the article 66.1.n) exemption may apply, which requires among other things having lived outside Spain for at least the preceding twelve months.
Does a van pay registration tax?
Usually not. Article 65.1.a).1.º takes categories N1, N2 and N3 out of the tax, and for N1 additionally requires significant use for a business, presumed where at least 50 per cent of the input VAT is deductible. But the same paragraph ends by putting those vehicles back into the tax «cuando se acondicionen para ser utilizados como vivienda».
And if I convert the van into a camper after registering it?
Article 65.3 reaches that. Changing the circumstances behind a non-subjection or an exemption within the following four years requires self-assessment referred to the moment of the change. The period drops to two years where the exemption used was the driving-school or the rental one.
Is there an exemption for disabled owners?
Article 66.1.d) exempts vehicles registered to a person with a disability for their exclusive use, on two conditions: at least four years since another vehicle was registered on the same terms, unless a total loss is evidenced, and no transfer within the following four years. It is also one of the exemptions article 66.2 conditions on prior recognition by the Administration: ticking it on the form is not enough.
Is this the same as Spanish road tax?
No. This one is paid once, on registration, goes to the State or the region and turns on emissions. Road tax, the IVTM, is paid every year to the town hall and turns on fiscal horsepower. Two different taxes on the same car, with two administrations and two different bases.

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Author: Thorben Rasmus Idel · Reviewed by: Nahar Geva · Last reviewed: