What the ITP is: who pays it, on what value, and what it costs by region

What the ITP taxes, and why it matters to you

The Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales Onerosas is one of three headings under the ITPAJD, the tax governed by the consolidated Act approved by Royal Legislative Decree 1/1993. The other two are Corporate Transactions and Stamp Duty.

Article 7.1.A) defines what is taxed with considerable width: "transfers for consideration by acts inter vivos of all classes of assets and rights forming part of the estate of natural or legal persons". In practice, the transaction that brings almost everyone into contact with this tax at some point is buying a second-hand home.

The operative word is onerosa, for consideration. Where property is received for nothing, by inheritance or gift, the tax is not the ITP but Inheritance and Gift Tax.

The buyer pays, and nothing can be agreed to the contrary

Article 8.a) is one of the few tax provisions that leaves no room for interpretation:

The following shall be liable to pay the Tax as taxpayer, whatever the stipulations established by the parties to the contrary: a) In transfers of assets and rights of all kinds, the person acquiring them.

That clause about stipulations to the contrary is deliberate. Even if buyer and seller sign that the seller will bear the ITP, as far as the tax authority is concerned the liable party is still the buyer.

The seller does not get away free either. The same transaction creates two separate obligations for them: the plusvalía municipal to the town hall, on the increase in the land's value, and the capital gain in their income tax return, which can be exempt if they reinvest in another main home.

ITP or VAT: the line between resale and new build

The two taxes exclude each other, and what decides which applies is not the age of the building but who is selling:

• A private individual sells (or a company acting outside its business activity): the sale goes through ITP.
• The developer sells, on first delivery: the sale carries VAT, at 10 % on housing, plus stamp duty on the deed at a regional rate usually between 0.5 % and 2 %.

You never pay both on the same sale. And the difference is real money: on a 200,000 € home, 10 % VAT plus 1.5 % stamp duty is 23,000 €, while ITP at 6 % in Madrid is 12,000 €.

The base changed in 2022, and it is what most people still get wrong

Here is the change that makes a budget built on the logic of a few years ago come up short.

Until 2021 the taxable base was the "real value" of the asset, an elastic concept that generated thousands of valuation checks and appeals. Law 11/2021, on the prevention of tax fraud, rewrote article 10 and replaced it with an objective figure. Paragraph 2 now reads:

In the case of immovable property, its value shall be the reference value provided for in the legislation governing the property cadastre, at the date the tax accrues. However, if the value of the property declared by the interested parties, the price or consideration agreed, or both, are higher than its reference value, the greatest of these magnitudes shall be taken as the taxable base.

Translated: you are taxed on the greater of the two, never the lesser. Buy a home for 190,000 € whose reference value is 205,000 € and the tax is worked out on 205,000 €. Getting a good price does not cut the tax bill below what the Catastro considers the property to be worth.

And where the property has no reference value assigned, or the Catastro cannot certify one, the same paragraph takes the greatest of three figures: the declared value, the agreed price and the market value.

Reference value is not cadastral value

Two different things, constantly confused:

The reference value is free to look up in the Catastro online office, signing in with an electronic certificate, an electronic ID card or Cl@ve. Check it before signing, because it decides the tax and does not always match what was negotiated.

If it looks excessive, article 10.3 allows only two routes to argue: appealing an assessment issued to you, or requesting rectification of your self-assessment. In both cases the Catastro must issue a binding report in the light of what you produce.

What it costs: the map of rates

Article 11.1.a) hands the rate to the regions and keeps a 6 % state rate in reserve for any region that had approved none, which today none has. The result is a very uneven map. These are the general rates in force in 2026 across the fifteen common-regime regions:

On a 200,000 € home the gap between cheapest and dearest region is 8,000 €: 12,000 € in Madrid against 20,000 € in Catalonia.

The Basque Country (through its three provincial treasuries) and Navarre have their own foral regime and set the tax themselves, so they fall outside this table and the source behind it.

Three rates changed recently

Worth flagging, because an article or a calculator written a year ago will give you the old figure:

• Valencia: down from 10 % to 9 % with effect from 1 June 2026, under article 33 of Law 5/2025. The 11 % above one million euros stays.
• Catalonia: replaced its 10 % to 11 % scale with one running 10 % to 13 % on 27 June 2025, under Decree-Law 5/2025.
• Region of Murcia: down from 8 % to 7.75 % on 25 July 2025, under article 55.Fourteen of Law 3/2025.

Cumulative scale or single rate: the trap in the tables

This is the part almost no calculator in the sector gets right, and the one that moves the most money.

Five regions (Catalonia, Aragón, the Balearics, Extremadura and Castilla y León) apply a cumulative scale, exactly like income tax: each slice of the base pays its own rate. Paying one euro more can never cost you more than one euro of tax.

Two others (Asturias and Valencia) do something different: they pick a single rate from the band the value falls into and apply it to the whole base. There the cliff is real, and it is steep.

An example with the Asturias figures, whose bands are 8 % up to 300,000 €, 9 % up to 500,000 € and 10 % above:

One euro more of value costs 3,000 € more of tax. If your purchase lands near a threshold in one of those two regions, the figure is worth looking at closely.

And here is the detail you need in order not to get it wrong: Asturias and Extremadura publish their tables in the same format, two columns of "taxable base" and "applicable rate". What separates them is a sentence. Extremadura's says, directly under the table, that "the tax shall be the sum of the amounts corresponding to the sums falling within each band". Asturias' says the rate applies "having regard to the whole value of the asset". They mean opposite things, and on a 600,000 € home reading one as the other is worth 8,000 €.

Reduced rates, and why there is no list here

Virtually every region cuts the rate in some cases: buyers under 35 or 36, large families, single-parent families, people with a disability, officially protected housing, municipalities at risk of depopulation, victims of domestic violence.

What does not exist is a common rule. Each region sets its own percentage and its own conditions, and almost always requires three things at once: that the home be the buyer's main residence, that its value stay under a ceiling, and that the buyer's income tax base stay under a limit. Those thresholds are revised most years.

So neither this article nor the calculator assumes them. What you can do is check your own region's current rules and then enter that percentage by hand.

Before the ITP comes the arras contract

The tax arrives with the deed, but the purchase almost never starts there. It starts with a deposit and a private contract fixing the price and the notary date, and what that contract says decides what happens if either side fails to get there. If they are penitential arras, either side can pull out at a known price and the ITP is never triggered at all. If they are confirmatory, the other side can require the sale to complete, and then the tax this page works out really is paid.

The paperwork: form 600 and thirty working days

Article 102.1 of the regulation sets the deadline plainly:

The period for filing the self-assessment returns, together with the document or the written declaration replacing it, shall be thirty working days from the moment the act or contract occurs.

That is thirty working days from the deed. You file form 600 with the tax authority of the region where the property is, not where you live.

With a warning almost no guide gives: that state period is a default. Article 56.2 of the consolidated Act lets each region regulate its own procedure, and several have. Checked in September 2026, Madrid keeps the thirty working days, but Catalonia, the Canary Islands and Galicia grant one month, which is less time rather than more, and Andalusia grants two months from the following day. The gap between the shortest and the longest period is over a month on the same deed, so it is worth checking your own region before trusting the general figure. The three regimes, with their sources, are in how form 600 is filed.

Two practical consequences worth knowing before you sign:

1. The ITP does not go into the mortgage. The bank finances the price of the home; the taxes and costs of the purchase are paid separately and in cash.
2. No ITP, no registration. The Land Registry will not register the purchase in your name while the tax is unpaid.

Work it out with your own region's figures

The transfer tax calculator applies the rate in force in all fifteen common-regime regions, solves the cumulative scales slice by slice, flags when the reference value rather than the price sets the base, and lets you enter your reduced rate if one applies.

And if you are selling as well as buying, the other half of the transaction is in the plusvalía municipal calculator, which is what the town hall charges the seller.