Complementaria‏, Purchase price tax.

Hi,

We purchased an apartment in June 2014 (sold by bank). We paid all taxes which were due at the time. We are now being asked to pay almost 5,000 euros in extra taxes, as the Spanish authorities value the apartment at a higher price than what we originally paid.  

Has anyone appealed or dealt with this? 

we have just purchased an apartment and not heard of this. Would be very dissapointed if this is the case. I will contact my lawyer to find out.

thanks

Brendan

We bought in 2008 and were not informed by our lawyers about the potential tax.  About 18 months later we recieved a demand to pay the Complementeria tax - we challenged very strongly, and over a very long period, but without any success and ended up having to pay it.

Hi,

My solicitor contested this. He arranged an independent survey and sent the findings to the relevant tax authorities.

Upshot was that instead of paying EU4500 in taxes, I only paid EU1,050.

However, the process will cost you - I had to pay EU1500 for legals and survey costs, so total cost was EU2550.

Still saved a fair bit. The whole process took over two years!!

Best of luck,

Martin

Hi, 

As a warning to others - we have just encountered a similar issue.

We completed in Oct 2014, and having paid all the taxes at the time - have now recieved a letter which is valuing the apartment at over €177,500 and requiring us to pay over €5000 more in extra taxes! 

Azi

like may on this site I too bought a property at Duquesa Village in Sept 2014. My solicitor told me that the Gov would tax me at the cadastral value of the property which at DV is more than what they presently sell for. For instance I purchased at 90,000 Euros but cadasteral value is 144,000 hence the Gov use the cadastral value to charge us for all taxes including they council tax. Many off you have purchased at the purchase price and now are being asked to pay the difference. Years ago when the spanish property market was corrupt people would pay a lump of cash directly to the seller and show a lower purchase price and avoid tax so the Gov now prevent it by the using Cadastral values to tax you. The problem here is the values of property fell during the depression and cadastral values were not changed to follow suit. You can appeal the cadastral values as in my case the tax is 5000 euros more than than purchase price tax which is really upsetting. My solicitor states that you would need an idependent valuation which if you got a mrtgage you will of had and that when appealed the Gov are aware that the cadastral values are not accurate so offer you a 50% refund which is you refuse normally results in you having to wait up to 2 years to get it all back. They think you will give up long before that. The spanish property market is now at a good price but the Spanish Gov behave in such a poor way that it makes you consider if buying there is worth it. The Banks are just as bad so keep an eye on your account and question the fees as they will take money without you knowing or agreeing. Get the bank managers email address and pester them when you see irregular payments. Spain will one day have to compensate all that have been ripped off as the British banks do now.......Good luck to you all and question everything that appears wrong as it normally is. 

We got stung for this badly. Bought a bank repo in Jan 2012 and in Oct 2012 received a letter saying they contested the amount paid and using the Cadastral value of 280,000 at their regional factor of 1.4 meant it was worth 380,000!

We appealed but the next letter they sent us was never received, the guards only gave us the notification from Correos when thit was already too late to collect. This lost us our legal right to appeal so we got stitched up for over EUR 18k

Both both lawyers we spoke to said any appeal was doomed to fail as the right to appeal expired as we did not reply to the letter on time.

This despite our house being worth half of the tax office valuation and us supplying an independant valuation confirming this. Also the cadastral value was printed incorrectly and was actually 208k not 280k so the calculation was even wrong!

But still no legal position to appeal.

Thank you for sharing the info. Sorry to hear that you were hit by such a large tax bill. It must have come as quite a shock
Hopefully this will be a useful warning to others. 

It is a shame that the solicitors do not ensure that all the correct taxes are applied before the completion process rather than after the event! Ours did warn us prior to purchase that extra taxes may be applied - but we assumed that this would be done as part of the conveyancing process - rather than as an afterthought!

BW

Azi

We purchased in October 2014. Our solicitor informed us about this tax, so we were expecting an extra payment however to our surprise and our solicitors it was a lot larger than anticipated. It came in at an extra €4000, which was paid on completion. We were told we could contest this but the fees and time it would take would add up to a similar figure. The only good thing about paying this tax is if we should sell the property we will only have to pay tax on the profit made between the cadestral value and the selling price. Hope this helps.