Blog · Legal process

Would Spain's proposed 100 percent tax reach EU buyers, and is the bill still alive?

§ 1Three tabs, one question

You are at the kitchen table with three tabs open. One headline says Spain will tax foreign buyers at 100%. A newsletter from an agent says foreigners are about to be banned. A forum thread says EU citizens are exempt, with no source. All three are about the same document, a bill, and none of them quotes it.

A bill is a proposal, and this one is not law. Read on 26 October 2026, it says three things that the headlines skip. The tax in it turns on where the buyer lives, and the article that creates it names no nationality. It is a tax and not a prohibition, so a purchase stays lawful and costs more. And it has not moved since it was admitted, while the Cortes that held it have been dissolved.

§ 2The bill, and the article that matters

The bill is registered in the Congress as 122/000196. Its title is Proposición de Ley para impulsar el alquiler de viviendas a precios asequibles, a bill to promote affordable rents, filed by the Socialist parliamentary group. The Mesa del Congreso, the chamber's governing board, agreed on 27 May 2025 to admit it, to send it to the Government and to publish it, and the Bulletin of the Cortes Generales printed it on 30 May 2025.

The tax on non-EU buyers is one article of a longer text. The other articles deal with income tax on lettings, the special regime for rental-housing companies, VAT on furnished short stays, the municipal tax on land value gains, and public land and state property for housing. The site's note on the 100 percent proposal gives the short version and the first reading of its status. What follows goes through article 4 in the order a buyer would ask the questions.

§ 3Article 4, line by line

Who would pay

The article creates the Impuesto Complementario Estatal sobre la Transmisión de Bienes Inmuebles a no Residentes en la Unión Europea, a state complementary tax on transfers of property to people and entities not resident in the EU. The taxpayer (section Séptimo) is the individual or entity that acquires for consideration. The test is residence. The text defines neither residence nor how a notary or a registrar would establish it, refers to no nationality, and says nothing about an EU national who lives outside the EU or a non-EU national who lives inside it.

For a buyer that leaves three gaps. The text we read does not say at which date residence is judged, or where a company is resident, and no rule in the article asks a notary to check either.

What would be taxed

The tax falls on paid transfers of real estate in Spain and on the creation or transfer of real rights over it, except security rights such as a mortgage (Primero and Quinto). Two exclusions matter. A transfer is outside the tax when the seller is a business or professional acting as such and the sale is subject to VAT, which on our reading is how a sale by a developer charging VAT on a new home would be treated. Operations that are exempt from VAT come back in. The exemptions of the transfer tax rules also apply (Sexto).

The article is stated to be without prejudice to the foral regimes of the Basque Country and Navarre, which would adapt it through their own joint commissions, and to international treaties in force (Cuarto and Decimoctavo). It names no treaty. The credit described below covers the transfer tax paid on the same operation, and on a resale home that includes the resale transfer tax set by each region, whose rates that chapter gives region by region.

The base

For real estate the base is the cadastral reference value on the day the tax falls due, or the declared value or the agreed price if either is higher (Octavo). Charges that lower the value of the property can be deducted, and debts cannot. The reference value can be challenged only by appealing the assessment or asking for its rectification, so that appeal is the one route the text gives a buyer who thinks it is too high.

The rate and the credit

The gross tax is the base at 100% (Décimo). The net tax is the gross tax minus the transfer tax actually paid on the same operation (Undécimo). Put the two together and the buyer's total tax equals the base, because the transfer tax is credited against it. The sums below are ours and invented.

Assume a flat with an agreed price of €200,000 and a cadastral reference value of €210,000. The base is the higher figure, €210,000. Assume the transfer tax actually paid is €16,000, which is only an assumption, since each region sets its own rate. The complementary tax would be €210,000 minus €16,000, which is €194,000, and the total of the two taxes would be €210,000 on top of the price. The article does not say how the credit works if no transfer tax is paid, so that case stays open.

What the text leaves open

The tax falls due on the day the taxed act or contract is made (Duodécimo, devengo). The taxpayer files a return and pays in the form, place and deadlines that the Ministry of Finance would set, and the bill gives no deadline (Decimocuarto and Decimoquinto). No rule makes the return a condition of the deed or of registration, and none asks a notary or registrar to check payment. The State Budget Law may change the rate and the deductions (Decimonoveno), so even a passed text would not fix the figure for good. There is no transitional provision, and the bill does not say whether contracts made before it came into force would be affected. It would enter into force the day after its publication in the BOE.

We found no page of the Ministry of Finance or the Tax Agency on this tax, and no form for it, which is what you would expect for a bill.

§ 4Does it reach an EU buyer?

On a plain reading, residence decides and nationality does not. That gives four cases, which we work through with the same invented flat and the same assumptions as above.

Buyer A is the reader the forum thread had in mind, and the thread is right for A. Buyer C is the one it forgets. An EU citizen who has moved to the UK or the US is not carved out by anything we read, and the article's own test would put that person in scope. Buyer D shows the other edge: a non-EU citizen who lives in Spain is outside the words, although the article does not say how residence would be proved.

These are readings of a text that defines nothing, so none of them is a promise. The chapter on buying as an EU or EEA citizen sets out how the process and the rest of the tax position differ for you today, and the question to put to a lawyer is where you would count as resident on the day the tax fell due.

§ 5What it would mean for UK and US buyers

Both countries are outside the EU, so a buyer who lives in either is, on the article's words, a person not resident in the EU. The text names no country and sets no rate by country. The one door it leaves open is the clause on treaties, and we did not read any treaty with this question in mind, so we cannot say whether one bears on it.

The differences for non-EU buyers that exist today do not depend on the bill: authorisation in military zones, a higher non-resident rate on property income and the lack of any right to live in Spain through a purchase. The chapter on buying as a non-EU citizen covers them, and the note on what limits non-residents today says why we found no national ban on non-residents buying.

§ 6Where the bill is now

What the bulletin shows

The bulletin we read records one step: the Mesa's decision of 27 May 2025. Under article 126 of the chamber's rules, a bill like this goes to the Government for its view on taking it into consideration, and once thirty days pass without the Government expressly refusing its conformity, the bill can go on the plenary agenda for its toma en consideración, the first vote on whether to proceed. That period has long since run. We found no record of the vote, of amendments or of a Government reply, and we could not tell from the bulletin whether the bill waited for a slot or was stopped.

We could not open the Congress's own record page for the bill, which needs a browser to load. The later bulletin numbers of the same series did not open either, and that proves nothing about whether they exist. The status here is therefore read from the bulletin and from two other official texts, and not from a status line.

What the dissolution did

Royal decree 806/2026 of 5 October 2026, published in the gazette on 6 October 2026 and in force that day, dissolves the Congress and the Senate and calls elections for 29 November 2026. The new chambers meet on 23 December 2026. Article 207 of the chamber's rules says that once the Congress is dissolved, quedarán caducados todos los asuntos pendientes de examen y resolución por la Cámara, which means that all matters pending before the chamber lapse. The exception covers matters that the standing committee, the Diputación Permanente, must handle under the Constitution. We found nothing to suggest that a members' bill on rental taxes is one of them, but we did not read the constitutional article that lists them.

Our reading, then, is that a bill admitted on 27 May 2025 and not enacted was pending on the day the decree took effect, and lapsed with the dissolution. We did not see the word caducada on a Congress page, and we do not present it as a status we read.

The Government's own housing decree-law, 29/2026, did not carry the tax in the articles we could read, although it covers several subjects this bill also covers, among them the levy on rental-housing companies, VAT on furnished short stays and the land value gains tax. We could not read its final provisions, so this is an absence in the part we saw. Its status after the dissolution is covered in the note on the 2026 law changes.

A lapsed bill is not a repealed policy. As we read article 207, nothing carries over, and nothing stops a group from filing the same text once the new Congress sits. It would begin again at the Mesa. The other proposals and the rules in force are listed in the section on rules and policy for property buyers.

§ 7One purchase, followed through the dates

Take an invented buyer who lives in the UK. She signs a reservation with a deposit on 2 November 2026 for the flat in the example, and the deed is set for 12 February 2027.

On the day she signs, we read no pending bill: on our reading of article 207 the one above lapsed on 6 October 2026. On 29 November 2026 the country votes. On 23 December 2026 the new chambers meet, and from that day a group could file a new bill. Between that filing and a published law there are steps we did not read in this research, so we cannot put a date on any of them, and we do not forecast one.

Now a thought experiment, and only that. Suppose a law with the text of article 4 were published on 5 February 2027, which would put it in force on 6 February 2027 under the bill's own entry-into-force clause. Her deed on 12 February 2027 would fall after that date, and her reservation on 2 November 2026 before it. The tax falls due when the taxed act or contract is made, and the bill has no transitional rule. Whether the reservation, the deed or neither is the taxed act is a question the text does not answer. It is the right question for her lawyer to put in writing, and it is why a contract clause that deals with a change in the law deserves a line of its own.

§ 8What we could not confirm

• The Congress's own record of bill 122/000196: its current status, whether it is marked as lapsed, and any later bulletin. We read the admission and the decree, not a status line.
• Whether the Government replied under article 126 and whether the plenary ever voted.
• The final provisions of decree-law 29/2026, and anything in the Constitution that sends a matter to the standing committee.
• Any Ministry of Finance or Tax Agency page, form or deadline for this tax. We found none.
• Any treaty, or any EU-law limit, that would bear on a tax of this kind.

§ 9Questions to put to a Spanish lawyer who acts for you alone

Put these in writing, and ask for the gazette or bulletin reference with each answer.

• Where would I count as resident on the day the tax would fall due, and how would that be shown to the notary?
• If a bill with this text were filed again, what is its stage on the day before I sign anything?
• Does my contract say what happens to the price, the deposit and my right to withdraw if a new tax is enacted between the reservation and the deed?
• If I buy through a company, where is it resident for this purpose, and does a different answer change my plan?
• Which date would be the day the tax falls due for my contract: the reservation, the private contract or the deed?

Dotted underline marks an illustrative figure. It shows how a calculation works and is not a quote, a rate or a forecast.

Legal note. How the process works in general. It is not legal advice, and it never replaces an independent Spanish lawyer acting for you.