guirijohn

La Vanguardia published ( 7th October) an interesting article on property taxes, principally about Catalonia but much is equally applicable elsewhere.

The transmission tax that you pay when buying a property is 10% of its market cost, but the Hacienda often applies the catastral value which can be 20% to 30% higher.

The tax on the escritura has trebelled in the last decade from 0.5% to 1.5%

IBI collection increased by 43% between 2007 and 2011 (last year for which data is available) and continues to rise. Catalonia plans to increase IBI receipts by 9.5% in 2014.

Taxes on imputed rentals have grown by 42% in the same period, raising a staggering € 2.8 billion from homes, many of which are empty.

La Vanguardia cites examples where the plusvalia, a tax on the increase in value of urban land during ownership, is more than the value of the property on which it is levied. The anomaly arises because catastral values continue to rise whilst property values are falling.

Upon selling, again the Hacienda often substitutes catastral values to increase the tax on the capital gain. It may even convert a real loss into a taxable gain.

Add to the above the rising costs of gas and electricity and ownership of property is Spain is becoming increasingly prohibitive. The irony is that higher taxes make Spain´s unsold properties less attractive to buyers.

EMR

Perhaps its time for a Forum name change.
Reason not to visit or own property in Spain !!

Lynn R

Anybody know of anything that HASN'T got more expensive since 2007 (apart from Spanish house price that is)?

Fred James

Yes, Telefonica ADSL charges!

Rosemary

Agree, I think that I pay about a third less now than when we began with them in 2006.

Rosemary

Longlegpete

Cost for our rubbish collection , hasn't changed in 6 years, as Fred and Rosemary has said Movistar ADSL, it's gone down by 35%, speeds go up 100%

jackytoo

How much is ADSL and all the trimmings now. When I left we were paying 39.90 plus IVA plus line rental. What is the full cost including everything? Our bill never averaged less than €75pm.

Rosemary

That is what mine was originally.

Rosemary

Fred James

The best deal at the moment is Movistrar Fusion Cero which gives you a landline with free calls in Spain to landlines and limited calls to mobiles, ADSL up to 10mb, and a mobile phone data , calls and SMS contract for €35 + iva.

megmet

We pay 24€ a month plus line rental from Telefonica, we get free local and national landline calls and cheap rate international ones too!

cricketman

We pay 50 euros per month for 40GB fibre optic internet, 90 cable TV channels, and a free Samsung Galaxy SIII with a data package. Very good value in my opinion

Lots of things are cheeper now than in 2007, especially big value items. Cars are cheaper, furniture in cheaper, houses and rents are cheaper, manual labour is cheaper, branded clothes are cheaper - especially in the sales

It's a good time to make a big purchase!

crookesey

A question guys.

If a Spanish property is placed within the 'wrapper' of say, a UK Ltd company, can the authorities still charge an assumed rental tax? A guy whose villa we stay at paid circa €5000 to transfer it into a UK Ltd company and states that it saves him a small fortune. And before you ask, no I can't ask him, he owed me a couple of grand in respect of an agreed business deal and welched on it, so I ignored his bill for the villa rental.

Lynn R

We don't have a landline, but come to think of it, we are now paying less for phone calls. We used to be on the Vodafone "Talk for 90 minutes, pay for 1" tariff which required us to put €15 credit on the phone every 30 days. We never used all the credit as we used Voipcheap or Localphone to make calls to the UK, so it just used to keep going up. Earlier this year OH bought a new phone and chose the tariff which gives us 100 free minutes which are valid for 30 days if we put €10 credit on the phone, so we're also saving a third on phone calls, not that €5 is a lot of money.

We're looking at buying a smart TV and the one OH has his eye on with Amazon went down by £35 from one day to the next this week, it's all good!

sam54140

in Andalucia what would you pay +/- for property tax on say a villa worth EUR 250,000? (also what/who determines the real value of the house btw ?)
rgds

sam54140

hi
what about ONO cable ? internet and phone 100MB for EUR 27,90
cable is usually so much faster than ADSL. but perhaps not available everywhere ?