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Hello Everyone, we are buying a house in Blanca and due to move over in September. I have been doing endless hours of 'research' and my head is about to explode with 'must remember' facts and information!:D
My question (first of many!) involves my Husband's pension, he is retiring from the Army. Does this count as a Government Pension and therefore taxable in England? If yes, and we don't have any other income, do we need to fill in a tax return in Spain next year? Sorry if this a question which has been asked and answered a thousand times before! Thank you in anticipation of replies.

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If that is your only income then you don't need to fill in a declaration. It is a government pension and will be taxed only in the UK.

However there are some significant advantages if you can claim to be tax resident with regard to CGT and IHT which you may have cause to appreciate in the future.

It won't do any harm to make a zero declaration from day one but it is not a legal requirement if you have no other income.

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Thank you for clarifying that it is a Government pension and your advice on a zero declaration. It will be a steep learning curve for the first year or two!

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Judging by the time of year you are moving over, you probably wont need to make a declaration until 14 months after. We moved in October and didnt make one covering the following year until the beginning of the year after

Also if you eventually have a state pension, the tax burden on that can be moved over to Spain, so that you can take advantage of two tax allowances, one here, one in the UK for your govt pension

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Welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy as much as I do :thumbsup:

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Welcome Gillian, I retired from the Army in 2009 and moved to Costa Blanca (but now live inland Las Alpujarras). A decision you will need to make is how to have his pension paid? either all to the UK or all to Spain? MOD will not split it. Personally I have mine paid into my UK bank and then send over a set amount each month through Currencies Direct - it works for us (others might disagree). I have now submitted 3 years tax returns (with zero to pay).

If your husband is retiring soon, then no doubt you are pretty busy going through the resettlement processes at the moment. If you need any help/advice on a military perspective of retiring to Spain feel free to drop me a pm.

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Thank you for the welcoming replies, advice and offer of help on military issues. I was quite intimidated by the depth of knowledge on here and how little we actually know compared to how much we have to learn! Hopefully it will be a little less painful if I can ask questions and make friends on here.

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We moved out in February this year and the advice and help form members of the forum has been invaluable. Your right that it is a steep learning curve but somehow once your here things do fall into place.
My best advice is engage a good gestor to deal with all the paperwork you will need to complete on arrival. They will also be able to give you accurate information on legal issues.

I have both my state pension and teacher pension paid directly to Spanish bank and they cover our living expenses and utilities and even allow for a few luxuries. OH has his current salary and teacher pension paid in UK. We won't have to complete a tax return here until next year.

Good luck with your move and if i can help in any way, just ask.

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Once again thank you for the words of encouragement.
I think the 'good' part of 'good gestor' is what is giving me the largest headache!
Does anyone live near Blanca in the Ricote Valley who could recommend one? I presume ( a dangerous thing I know!) that it is better to live close by rather than a distance to the gestor.

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I'm afraid I live too far away from your area to be of use in recommending a gestor but one that is based close to where you will live is best. We were fortunate enough to have one who is native speaking English but brought up in Spain, which is helpful if you are not fluent yourself. Hopefully someone closer to you can suggest one.:fingerscrossed:

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Sujee we are just like you my wife has a teachers pension and I have a civil service pension (Government Pensions GP) and we both receive our retirement pensions (State Pensions SP)

In this situation you cannot export your GP un-taxed from UK but you can export your SP un-taxed from UK. We do exactly that and the benefit is that we each get two personal allowances to set against our pensions in each country. This means that we pay no tax on our SP's in Spain and the tax on our GP's is reduced by SPx20p in UK for me that comes to 7000x20p or £1400. Similar for Kath. Worth having in my book.

Something we have found by experience is that the direct transfer by DWP of the SP's to our Spanish accounts is at a cracking exchange rate and arrive like clockwork every 4 weeks. Last month they exchanged at 1.2450 will find out tomorrow what we will get this month.

Less happy about Capita who subcontract the transfer and exchange rate, was Bank of New York. We tried it and went back to paying into UK account
and managing the exchange and transfer ourselves. Overall I think we have done better on the exchange rate and we don't pay the transfer fee that Capita charge.

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Thanks for that info on GP, I will have to leave mine to suffer the tribulations of Capita for a while as I don't have a bank account in UK anymore and they won't pay it into hubby's account. When I next go back I just have to pop into the branch and add my signature to make it joint.

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Good thinking simples! SP came through about lunchtime yesterday (clockwork). 1:1.2356 exchange rate which was about interbank high on Monday not bad.

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I live in Cieza we used a gestor to re matriculate an english car and to change addresses and ownership on our spanish car, we did not use a gestor for anything else. We are lucky in that my sister in law speaks fluent spanish and she phoned around the local gestors until she found one that had completed this service before and sounded confident in doing this. I would think that in Blanca there must be a gestor that has helped people before as there are quite a few english living there. We have an assessoria for our tax returns but as they are complicated no one in Cieza wanted to get involved and we have had to use someone on the coast, makes a nice day out! There was an English speaking tax lawyer in Fortuna who gives the first consultation for free, but after that he was very expensive that was 3 years ago I don't know if he is still around.

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Thank you for the information, we have friends in Fortuna so hopefully they could help.
When we went to view the property the Estate Agent said he thought the house behind ours was owned by an English couple. We hoped there would be a few British families as we are moving with our youngest son who is 11 and will be attending the local school.
Have you lived in the area for long? I have looked up all the local towns/ villages but all the information seems to have merged into one huge mass! Hopefully we will have plenty of time to discover it all at our leisure very soon.

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We have lived in Cieza for over 3 years we moved with children 9 and 6 at the time, in Cieza I do not know of any other British children but I am sure there are some in Blanca. We originally wanted to buy in Blanca and had visited the local school they were lovely and helpful have you applied for the place yet as it is the final few weeks for applications.

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No! Will ring my friend tonight and see if she feels confident enough in her Spanish( which I think is excellent but she is more modest!) to talk to the local schools and find out if they have spaces and what documentation they need to process the application. All the reading I have done indicated that we had to either own a house or be able to produce a rental agreement to be able to apply. I have been able to get a full immunisation record which I believe is also a requirement. Thank you for your advice so far, it is extremely useful.

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you'll need padrón, resident cert. probably passports & a medical ( you can get the form from the school or the ayuntamiento dept which deals with education in the town) You might also have to have medical ins or tarjeta sanitaria - but come to think of it you won't get the resident cert. without that...........

school finished for the summer a week or so ago in most areas, but there will probably be somone still working for a bit longer

if not, then the education dept at the ayuntamiento will tell you which school you will be sending your son to.

if you tell me what year he was born I can tell you which year he is age-appropriate for - primary or secondary

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He was born in January 2001, from what I have researched he will be in the final year of primary, is that correct? It is actually the reason we have brought our move forward by 12 months so that he can have the year to learn Spanish fluently before going to Secondary school ( he has had lessons here, but no where near enough to be fluent) .

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yes it would be the last year of primary

often when children start that close to secondary they will be held back a year initially to give them a chance to catch up a bit linguistically - or they will be put into the age-appropriate year & maybe repeat if they don't quite become fluent enough

many will manage, some won't & will be held back a year - but then so will quite a lot of native Spanish speakers for one reason or another - it's like a second chance in a way

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Thank you so much for the information, he is our main concern and we need to do all we can to help him settle in and enjoy the opportunity he has to learn a whole new way of life ( him and us!! ).

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I think the name of the school in Blanca is CP Antonio Molina Gonzalez, there is also a catholic school, I wonder if you can use your pre purchase contract to at least begin the paperwork. The murcia education website is www.educarm.es I would phone the school to see if they have places left, if they have they maybe able to advice you as to the paperwork they will accept to reserve the place. When you have arrived your son will need an NIE for a secondary school place but we got our primary places with passport numbers. Strangely in Cieza we were not asked for immunization records for the children in primary school but they wanted these and Tarjeta Sanitaria when my daughter went up to secondary school. When you are settled you will need to get your sons immunization records put onto a spanish card and he may well need to have some extra jabs as spanish children have a lot more than english children, the vaccination nurse at our surgery sorted it all out for us. When we moved we did not know that we had to applu for a place so early and we misssed all the usual time limits, we found that through July we could still move the process forward. Good Luck.

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Great details, thank you so much! Yes, my friend will ring and hopefully we can get the school ball rolling! Do you know if there is a secondary school actually in Blanca or do all the children travel to a bigger town?

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I think we were told that the children went to one of the bigger towns nearby, ours were so young then that I can't remember. I think school restarts on the 10th of september for primary children the educarm website will have the school calenders up for next year at some point, you will find that there are local variations especially around fiestas so when you have the place ask the school secretary for the dates as I spent the first year turning up to find the school closed because they were taking a puente!

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your son will need the NIE/resident cert now for primary school - they are really tightening up on things