If you are thinking of buying or selling a property from January 1, 2022, you will be interested in knowing what changes the Government is preparing for us when it comes to checking out.

If the house is newly built, we will not have many problems, apart from being able to find it available on the market, because new apartments carry a common state tax for all: VAT at the single rate of 10% and the tax base is the deed value. . But for subsequent transmissions, the tax paid is the Property Transfer Tax, better known as ITP, and it is autonomous in nature. Not all the autonomous communities have the same rate for this tax and the cheapest ITP, on the transfer of homes, is found in the Basque Country, with 4%, and in Catalonia we have the highest, 10%, which will be 11% if our tax base exceeds one million euros. At the moment, regarding the tax rates we will not have any difference with the entry of the new year and it continues to be based on RD 1/1993, which establishes the what and how of the ITP. But taking advantage of a recent law, Law 11/2021 on the prevention and fight against fraud, the State has made some "small" changes when calculating what the ITP tax base will be and this novelty will directly affect our pockets if we buy or we sell below that price.

Until December 31 of this year, the tax base to settle the ITP was the price that appeared in the deed, provided that this price was equal to or above the cadastral value multiplied by a variable coefficient depending on the municipality. Remember that the cadastral value is a theoretical data of how much our property is worth by the State and is the sum of the value of the land and the value of the construction. This cadastral value serves as the basis for the municipalities to charge us the Real Estate Tax or IBI and is used as the basis for calculating the equity value for the estate tax. Since this cadastral value is theoretical, there are always substantial differences between the real deed value and the cadastral value, and normally the latter is usually lower than the real sale price. It was easy to calculate how much ITP had to be paid because the tax base was the deed price (as long as the deed price was higher than the Cadastre price multiplied by the coefficient, which often happened).

But from the new year a new "cadastral value" appears, which in principle they tell us will only be used to calculate the ITP and the wealth tax, being the average value of all sales made in a specific area. Notaries will be obliged to communicate to the Government the sale price that appears in each deed and the location of the property and the State, in December of each year, will make public these values per square meter. Ultimately, the State will become the appraiser of our homes and will tell us what the "real" value is, whether we are buyers or sellers. So, if the sale price is above that cadastral value, we will pay taxes for the deed value but if we sell below the cadastral value we will have to pay for the cadastral value, and since the calculation base is an average, we will always have values for below, that they will be taxed at the average value; and values above, which will be taxed for the real value. Basically, for all values below the average, more taxes will be paid than up to now. By the way, if you are sellers the same thing happens, the benefits will be taxed for the difference between the purchase price and the sale price and if we sell below the average, the cadastral price will have to be set and we will have to pay taxes for benefits that will not be real.

If you want to avoid surprises before selling or buying a property, visit a collegiate API that is part of the APIalia network to advise you.