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Home > Inheritance, Taxes > Spanish Inheritance Tax Abolished? I’m Afraid Not!

Spanish Inheritance Tax Abolished? I’m Afraid Not!

September 19th, 2008

Some of you have probably recently read in the press (http://www NULL.citywire NULL.co NULL.uk/personal/-/news/money-property-and-tax/content NULL.aspx?ID=313872)that Spanish Inheritance Tax has been abolished, and have received the news with excitement! Well, I don’t believe that anyone is in a hurry to pass away to benefit from this supposed tax exemption, but it would indeed mean a relief for all of those concerned about the Inheritance Tax burden for our heirs when the time comes!

As our colleague Fernando Del Canto rightly points out in his excellent blog, the news is incorrect. Apparently, Spain’s Government has published in the English version of their site a press release (http://www NULL.la-moncloa NULL.es/idiomas/9/actualidadhome/14082008_24reformas NULL.htm) in which they mistakenly claim that the abolishment of Inheritance Tax is to be approved.

The text, lost in translation, is as follows:

The Government approves the abolition of Inheritance Tax and 24 reforms aimed at economic recovery

Thursday, 14 August 2008

The president of the Government appeared after today’s extraordinary Cabinet Meeting to explain the economic reform programme that is focussed on six strategic sectors: finance for small and medium sized enterprises, housing, transport, energy, climatic change, telecommunications and the information society, and services. These reforms will take place during 2008 and 2009 with the aim of helping families and businesses, and preparing for economic recovery.
[…]
Adopted measures

The head of the Government announced that the Bill for abolishing inheritance tax, to come into effect from 1 January 2008, has been referred to Parliament. This represents a fiscal improvement of 1,800 million euros for approximately one million taxpayers.
[…]

We would like to confirm that, unfortunately, this is just an error due to a poor technical translation into English. What the Government meant to inform was that Property Wealth Tax (http://www NULL.marbella-lawyers NULL.com/blog-by-antonio-flores/property-wealth-tax-at-last-suppressed/), as already reported at large by the media, was to be abolished as from the 1st of January 2008.

Inheritance, Taxes , ,

  1. skinny
    September 19th, 2008 at 22:12 | #1

    i find this kind of embarrasing for the spanish government who have failed to rectify this news after more than a month

  2. October 19th, 2009 at 18:49 | #2

    Yea would have been nice if the Spanish had done this, but oh well. Not surprising that the government took so long though either – the manana culture right?

  3. raymundo
    October 20th, 2009 at 08:53 | #3

    Dear Sir/Madam,

    Spanish IHT has been supressed (though not completely abolished) already in six regions in Spain (out of 17) and more will follow. There’s an ongoing trend to abolish this tax much like there was to abolish Wealth tax, which was abolished last year.

    You can read my article:

    Spanish Inheritance Tax: Advantages of Making a Will in Spain – 3rd September 2009

    http://www.marbella-lawyers.com/articles/showArticle/spanish-inheritance-tax-spain-iht (http://www NULL.marbella-lawyers NULL.com/articles/showArticle/spanish-inheritance-tax-spain-iht)

    Yours faithfully,

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