Spain's 100% Tax on Non-EU Buyers: What's Actually True in 2026

As of August 2026, there is no 100% tax on non-EU property buyers in Spain. The measure announced in January 2025 was registered in Congress as a bill in May 2025 and has not been debated or voted since. It was left out of the government's January 2026 housing package, and legal scholars have questioned whether it would survive the Spanish Constitution and EU law at all (analysis in The Conversation). If you buy a home in Spain today as an American, Briton, or any other non-EU citizen, you pay exactly the same transfer tax as a Spanish buyer.

The short version:

• The "100% tax" exists as a stalled parliamentary bill, not as law. Nothing has changed at any notary's desk.
• What did change: the golden visa ended in April 2025 (Ley Orgánica 1/2025). Buying property no longer grants residency — and foreign buying rose anyway.
• Foreign buyers set an all-time record in 2026: 15.98% of all purchases in Q2, the highest share the registrars have ever recorded, with purchases up 11% year on year (idealista/news, August 2026).
• The costs that actually hit non-resident buyers are older and less dramatic: regional transfer tax of 6–13%, bank financing capped around 60–70% of the price, an annual non-resident tax return, and — since April 2026 — a digitally enforced 90/180-day rule for visits.
• This page gets updated if the bill ever moves. The date at the top is the promise.

Where did the 100% tax idea come from?

In January 2025 the Spanish government announced a package of housing measures, and one line traveled around the world: a tax of up to 100% of the property value for buyers who are neither EU citizens nor residents. The stated aim was to discourage speculative purchases by people who neither live in Spain nor intend to.

The proposal that eventually reached Congress in May 2025 was a proposición de ley — a bill, the start of a legislative process, not the end of one. That process has produced nothing since: no committee debate, no amendments phase, no vote. When the government presented its next round of housing measures in January 2026, the 100% tax was not among them.

None of this means the idea is legally dead. Bills can sit dormant and revive. But eighteen months of silence, an absent government majority, and serious doubts about compatibility with the free movement of capital (which the EU treaties protect even for third-country nationals) make it a proposal to watch, not a cost to budget for.

Has the 100% tax been approved?

No. As of August 2026 it has not been approved, debated in committee, or scheduled for a vote. No Spanish region applies it, no notary collects it, and no tax agency form exists for it.

What a non-EU buyer pays at signing today is the ordinary regional transfer tax (ITP) on resale homes — the same tax a buyer from Madrid or Munich pays. The rate depends on the region: 6% in Madrid, 7% in Andalucía, 9% in the Valencian Community since June 2026, and a 10–13% sliding scale in Catalonia. On top come notary, registry, gestoría and valuation fees, which run around €1,900–€2,000 on a €250,000 purchase and barely vary by region. You can compute the full number for any region with our free buying-costs calculator for Spain — no sign-up, no lead capture.

Can non-EU citizens still buy property in Spain in 2026?

Yes, without restriction on the purchase itself. Spain has no nationality-based ownership limits (a narrow military-zones authorisation regime exists for some rural areas, largely dormant in practice). The purchase process for a non-EU buyer is the same as for anyone: NIE number, Spanish bank account, deposit contract, notary.

Two things did genuinely change recently, and they are worth separating from the tax scare:

The golden visa is gone. Since 3 April 2025, buying property worth €500,000 or more no longer grants a residence permit. If your plan depended on residency-through-purchase, that route closed. Notably, foreign buying did not fall afterwards — it rose to the record above, which tells you how few purchases the visa was actually driving.

Your days in Spain are now counted digitally. The EU's Entry/Exit System became fully operational on 10 April 2026 (European Commission). For non-EU owners without residency, the 90-days-in-any-180 limit stopped being an honour system: passports are matched against a database at every border crossing. Second-home owners planning long Spanish autumns need to count days — or look into a non-lucrative visa.

What taxes do foreign buyers actually pay?

The honest list for a non-resident, non-EU buyer in 2026, in the order they arrive:

Nothing in that table changed in 2025 or 2026 except Valencia's ITP cut from 10% to 9%. The dramatic-sounding changes (golden visa, EES) affect residency and time in the country, not the cost of buying.

Should you wait to buy because the tax might pass?

Waiting for legislative certainty in Spanish housing policy is a long game — the record so far is eighteen months of nothing. A more practical framing: if the bill ever moves, it moves through a public, slow process (committee, amendments, votes) with months of warning, and tax changes of this scale do not apply retroactively to completed purchases. A purchase signed today is governed by today's rules.

The variables that should actually drive timing are the boring ones: the region you buy in (a €250,000 home carries €11,950 in taxes and costs in the Basque Country and €26,950 in Catalonia — the spread is wider than most price negotiations), your financing (that 60–70% cap defines your real budget), and the euro cost of your own currency. Run your region's number in the calculator, and if you're deep enough in the process to be collecting invoices, that's the job CasaTab was built for.

This article is updated whenever the bill's status changes. Last verified against the parliamentary record and press coverage on 26 August 2026.