What Spanish inheritance tax is: who pays it and why the region decides

What the tax actually taxes

Spanish inheritance tax charges the increase in wealth a person obtains when they receive something by inheritance, legacy or any other succession title, and also what the beneficiary of a life policy collects. It does not tax the deceased's estate, and it does not tax the inheritance as a block: it taxes each person's individual acquisition.

That distinction is not a formality. Article 9.1.a of Act 29/1987 defines the taxable base as the net value of each beneficiary's individual acquisition, and the scale is progressive. Adding up what three siblings receive and running the scale once produces a considerably higher number than running it three times separately. Each heir files their own return with their own figures, including their own pre-existing wealth, which as we will see also feeds the calculation.

The taxpayer, then, is the heir. Not the estate, not the executor, not the notary.

What this page takes as given is what that individual share actually is, and that is decided by civil law rather than tax law: forced heirship reserves a fraction of the estate to the children, the ascendants or the survivor, and that fraction is not the same across Spain. It is worth settling before working out the tax, because a division made on the wrong rule produces a perfectly correct return on a base that was never yours.

The region decides, and it is not the one you think

This is where most people go wrong at the very first step, and it is the costliest place to do it.

The tax is a state statute, but it is ceded to the regions, which may set four decisive things: the kinship reduction, the rate scale, the wealth multiplier and the rebate on the tax due. The State's own rules apply only to whatever the region has left alone.

Which region? Article 32.2.a of Act 22/2009 leaves no room: the tax on an inheritance arises in the territory where the deceased had their habitual residence on the date of accrual, which is the day they died. Article 28.1.1.b defines habitual residence as the territory where they spent most days of the five immediately preceding years.

It does not matter where the heir lives. It does not matter where the flat is. It does not matter where the deed of acceptance is signed.

If your mother lived in Santander and you live in Oviedo, the estate is computed under Cantabrian rules. If she lived in Oviedo and you in Santander, under Asturian ones. On an 800,000 € estate passing to a child, those two cases differ by roughly 149,000 €.

The four kinship groups

Article 20.2.a sorts heirs into four groups, and almost everything else follows from which one you are in:

• Group I: descendants and adoptees under 21.
• Group II: descendants and adoptees of 21 or over, the spouse, ascendants and adopters.
• Group III: collaterals of the second and third degree (siblings, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces) and ascendants and descendants by affinity.
• Group IV: collaterals of the fourth degree (cousins), remoter degrees, and what the statute calls strangers, meaning anyone unrelated.

The distance between group II and group III bites twice. The kinship reduction falls from tens or hundreds of thousands of euros to a few thousand. And the multiplier jumps from 1 to 1.5882, which is 58.82 % more tax on the same gross figure. A sibling and a child inheriting exactly the same amount do not pay remotely comparable bills.

Group IV gets no kinship reduction anywhere except the Balearic Islands, which allow a symbolic 1,000 €, and no rebate anywhere at all. An unregistered unmarried partner inherits as a stranger, with a multiplier of 2 on the tax; a registered one is treated as a spouse in most regions, but that depends on each regional statute.

How the figure is reached, step by step

The chain is always the same, and it is worth seeing whole, because the regions can touch nearly every link.

One, the assets. You value what each heir receives. Since Act 11/2021, article 9.3 sets the value of real property at the Catastro's valor de referencia unless the declared value is higher. It is the same rule that governs transfer tax on a second-hand home, and for the same reason: to take the argument about real value off the table.

Two, the household goods. Article 15 presumes that every estate contains furniture, clothing and effects, and values them at 3 % of the estate. They are added automatically. The only way out is to prove conclusively that they do not exist or are worth less, though the Supreme Court has held that the 3 % does not reach assets that by their nature cannot carry household goods, such as current-account balances or shares.

Three, the debts and the costs. You deduct the debts the deceased left (article 13) and the costs of the last illness, burial and funeral, provided they are evidenced and proportionate to the estate (article 14). The result is the taxable base.

Four, the reductions. This is where the regions land their first blow. Article 20.1 fixes the order: the State's first, the region's after. The result is the net taxable base.

Five, the scale. The scale applied to the net base gives the gross tax. Nine regions have their own; the rest use the article 21.2 scale, which runs from 7.65 % to 34 % across sixteen brackets.

Six, the multiplier. The gross tax is multiplied by a coefficient that depends on the heir's own pre-existing wealth and on their kinship group. The result is the tax due. This is why two siblings inheriting the same amount can pay different bills.

Seven, the rebate. Here the regions land the second blow, which is usually the decisive one. The result is the tax to pay.

The State reductions, which are the floor

Where a region has legislated nothing, article 20.2 applies:

• By kinship: group I, 15,956.87 € plus 3,990.72 € for each year the heir is short of 21, capped at 47,858.59 €; group II, 15,956.87 €; group III, 7,993.46 €; group IV, nothing.
• By disability, and compatible with the above: 47,858.59 € for a degree of 33 % to 64 %, and 150,253.03 € from 65 %.
• By life insurance: 100 % capped at 9,195.49 €, once per heir however many policies, and only for a spouse, ascendant, descendant, adopter or adoptee.
• By the deceased's main home: 95 % of its value capped at 122,606.47 € per heir, for the spouse, ascendants, descendants, or a collateral over 65 who had lived with the deceased for the two preceding years. It requires holding the home for ten years.
• By an individual business, professional practice or shares exempt from wealth tax: 95 %, also with ten years of retention.

Almost every region improves on these figures, some of them substantially. Andalusia and Galicia raise the group I and II kinship reduction to one million euros. Extremadura to 500,000. Asturias to 300,000. Catalonia, the Canary Islands and Cantabria set different amounts depending on whether you are the spouse, a child, a grandchild or a parent. And Madrid stays at 16,000 €, because its relief is not in the reduction but in the rebate.

The rebate, where almost everything is settled

For children and spouses, the rebate is the lever that erases the bill, and the 2026 map looks like this:

• 100 %: Cantabria and the Balearic Islands.
• 99.9 %: the Canary Islands, which extend it to group III as well.
• 99 %: Andalusia, Castilla y León, Extremadura, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia and the Valencian Community. Madrid adds 50 % for group III from 1 July 2025, and the Valencian Community 25 % from 1 June 2026, rising to 50 % on 1 June 2027.
• Sliding: Castilla-La Mancha runs from 100 % down to 80 % as the net base grows. Catalonia uses a descending schedule by bands of the taxable base, with a flat 99 % for the spouse only.
• Group I only: Galicia and Aragon rebate 99 % for under-21s and relieve everyone else through the reduction instead, of one million and half a million euros respectively.
• None at all: Asturias.

Asturias deserves its own paragraph, because it is the exception that explains the rest. Until 2016 it rebated 100 % of the bill for group II heirs with bases up to 150,000 €. Act 6/2016 repealed that with effect from 2017 and replaced it with a 300,000 € reduction and a scale reserved for groups I and II that starts straight at 21.25 % and reaches 36.50 %. Below 300,000 € nothing is due. Above it the bill climbs very fast: on 800,000 € inherited by a child, roughly 149,000 €.

The threshold correction almost nobody applies

The third paragraph of article 22.2 carries a fairness rule most published calculators ignore, and it is worth knowing because it only helps if it is claimed.

The multipliers step up in bands of the heir's own wealth: one up to 402,678.11 €, another up to 2,007,380.43 €, and so on. Crossing a band can cost more tax than the euro that crossed it. When that happens the statute requires the excess back: the difference between the tax at the applicable multiplier and the tax at the one immediately below cannot exceed the amount by which the wealth passed the threshold.

A real example: a group IV heir with gross tax of 4,948.93 € and pre-existing wealth of 402,679 €, one euro over the line. Without the correction that euro would cost almost 495 € of extra tax. With it, it costs 89 cents.

The deadlines, and the one that closes first

Article 67.1.a of the Regulation gives six months from the death to file and pay.

Article 68 allows a further six months, and here is the trap almost no guide mentions: the request must be filed within the first five months of the period, and paragraph 4 says flatly that it will not be granted if it arrives later. The door to the extension closes a month before the door it extends.

If a month passes from the request with no notification, the extension is deemed granted (paragraph 3). And it is not free: paragraph 6 requires late-payment interest from the end of the sixth month until the day the return is filed.

If the extension is refused, paragraph 5 extends the deadline by the days between the request and the notification of refusal, with the same interest rule from the sixth month.

What happens if you do not pay

The tax is time-barred four years after the end of the voluntary period, and until then the administration can assess with surcharges, interest and penalties.

But the practical effect arrives much sooner: the estate is frozen. The Land Registry will not register the transfer of a property without proof the tax was filed, and banks will not release the deceased's balances. Not paying does not avoid the tax; it makes it dearer and locks up the assets meanwhile.

Disclaiming the inheritance

You can disclaim, and it sometimes makes sense when the estate carries more debt than assets or when the tax exceeds the cash available. But the exact effect is worth understanding.

A plain disclaimer, made before the tax is time-barred, is untaxed for the person disclaiming. The people who receive their share pay instead, with one twist from article 28: they are given the multiplier that would correspond to the disclaiming person's kinship if that is harsher than their own.

A disclaimer in favour of a named person is not a disclaimer. It is two transactions: you accept the inheritance and then give away what you accepted. Both are taxed, inheritance and gift.

And disclaiming after accepting, even tacitly, exempts you from nothing.

Inheritance and gifts are not the same thing

The same statute governs both, but important things change:

• A gift carries no household-goods presumption.
• Most regions apply no kinship reduction to gifts, though many do rebate them.
• The deadline is thirty working days, not six months.
• The connecting factor changes: for a gift of real property the region where the property sits decides; for anything else, the donee's region.
• And a gift of money usually requires evidencing the source of the funds in the public deed itself for the rebate to apply.

Now do it with your own numbers

The Spanish inheritance tax calculator runs the whole chain under the rules of the region you pick and then runs it again across all fifteen mainland regions, so you can see the entire map at once. It is the comparison no regional tax agency can publish, because each one only answers for its own territory.

If you are going to sell what you inherited, look next at the municipal capital-gains calculator, which is the other tax on that road, and if you do not yet know what the home is worth for tax purposes, start with what the cadastral value is.