Spain · Tax information · Information, not legal advice — as at 30 August 2026
The value you declare when you inherit in Spain — and the tax you pay when you sell
When Spanish inheritance tax is declared, each asset goes in at a value — for property, no lower than the official reference value on its tax record, and as high as its real market worth if you choose. That declared value then becomes your starting value for capital-gains tax when you later sell. In regions such as Andalucía, where close family pay little or no inheritance tax after the regional reductions, declaring a realistic value can cost almost nothing today and save real money at the sale — which is why the number deserves a decision, not a default.
Two taxes, one number
A Spanish inheritance involves a value twice. First, at the succession: the inheritance-tax return (due within six months) states a value for each asset — for a property, the law sets a floor at the official reference value (valor de referencia) on its tax record, and you may declare more, up to what the property is really worth. Second, at the sale: in broad terms, the value you declared at the succession becomes your acquisition value — the number your capital gain is measured from when the property is later sold.
Why a low value is often a false economy
Declaring the bare minimum feels prudent — a smaller inheritance-tax bill today. But in much of Spain close family now pay little or no inheritance tax anyway: in Andalucía, for example, spouses, children and parents have a large personal reduction and a further regional relief that between them wipe out most bills. Where that is the case, a low declared value saves next to nothing now — and simply stores up a larger taxable gain for the sale, when a non-resident heir pays Spanish tax on the difference between sale price and declared value. A realistic value at the succession can be the cheapest tax planning in the whole file.
It depends on the region — and on the heir
Spain is regional: the reliefs differ by comunidad, and an heir outside the exempt classes, or in a less generous region, faces a genuine two-sided calculation — inheritance tax on the extra value today against capital-gains tax saved tomorrow. There are also practical wrinkles at the sale itself (a buyer from a non-resident heir must, in broad terms, retain a slice of the price on account of tax). The point of this page is not the arithmetic — it is that the moment to do the arithmetic is before the return is filed, because the declaration is what fixes the number.
What that looks like in figures (illustrative only)
Say a house is really worth about €300,000 and the heirs could defensibly declare it anywhere between €200,000 and that figure. They sell two years later for €310,000. Declared at €200,000, the taxable gain is €110,000; declared at €300,000, it is €10,000. A non-resident seller pays a flat 19% on the gain — so roughly €20,900 against roughly €1,900. And in a region like Andalucía, where a child or spouse takes €1,000,000 free of inheritance tax and a 99% rebate above it, declaring the extra €100,000 costs them almost nothing today. That is the whole trade in one line: a near-free hundred thousand of value now, worth about nineteen thousand euros later.
The same trade-off, country by country: Portugal · Italy · France — and the tax questions to ask before you list an inherited property abroad.
(Information, not tax advice; the mechanics are stated in broad terms as at the date above and vary by region — regional budgets change these rules often.)