Guide

What actually changed in the Spanish rules for foreigners

It has not. In January 2025 Pedro Sánchez announced an intention to raise the tax burden on property purchases to as much as 100 % of the property value. The government itself described the target as extranjeros extracomunitarios no residentes, that is buyers from outside the EU who are also not resident in Spain. An announcement is not law in force, and the tax in that form was never introduced.

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Summary

What people worry about

Spain has introduced a hundred percent tax for foreign buyers.

How it really is

What changes it

That does not mean Spain will never introduce a different tax or restriction. Political activity around taxing foreign non-resident buyers differently continues. But that is a different thing from the announced hundred percent tax, which was never law in force.

What we do about it

We follow only the changes that actually pass, and we check them for your specific situation. If one of them affects your purchase, we will tell you before you sign a reservation.

In 30 Seconds

Announced in January 2025, aimed only at non-EU citizens who are also non-residents, never a government bill, and as of August 2026 still not enacted. A Czech, EU, buyer was never inside its scope.

What was actually announced in January 2025?

On 13 January 2025, Spain's prime minister presented a 12-measure housing package. One measure proposed a new state tax of up to 100 percent of a property's value on purchases made by buyers who are both non-EU citizens and non-residents of Spain. The government's own justification cited around 27.000 homes bought in 2023 by that specific group, and compared the idea to foreign-buyer measures used in Canada.The word "foreigner" is too broad for what was actually proposed. The scope named in the government's own announcement and in the bill that later followed was narrower on purpose: non-EU citizens who are also not resident in Spain. A Czech citizen is an EU citizen. Whatever this measure becomes, it was never aimed at foreign buyers in the first place.

What the headlines saidWhat was actually proposed

Spain introduced a 100 percent tax on foreign buyers: Nothing was introduced as law. A political announcement proposed the idea; an announcement and a law are not the same thing.
This affects any foreign buyer, including EU citizens: As announced and as later drafted, the measure targets non-EU citizens who are also non-resident. EU citizens, including Czechs, were never inside its scope.

Sources

How does a political announcement turn into an actual Spanish law?

An announcement is a political statement, nothing more, until it becomes a bill and moves through parliament. This particular measure never even arrived as a government bill. It surfaced months later as a "proposición de ley", a bill filed by the governing party's own parliamentary group, folded inside a wider bill about affordable rental housing. Spain's Congress agreed only to admit that bill for processing on 27 May 2025. That is the very first procedural step a bill takes, long before any committee debate or vote.As drafted, the tax would apply to second-hand home purchases by non-EU-resident buyers. New-build purchases from a developer would be excluded entirely, since those already carry VAT. The buyer would also credit whatever transfer tax was already paid, rather than stacking the new tax on top of it. None of this has been debated in committee or brought to a vote at any point since.

Does "admitted for processing" mean the bill is close to becoming law?No. Admission for processing is the administrative step that lets a bill exist on the parliamentary record and be assigned to a committee. It says nothing about whether that committee will debate it, amend it, or ever bring it to a vote. Many bills are admitted and then sit for years without further action.

What is the actual status of this proposal now, in 2026?

As of August 2026, the measure has still not been debated in any Congress committee and has never been put to a vote. If anything, the proposal has lost ground rather than gained it: when the government announced its own housing measures again in January 2026, this specific tax was quietly absent from the new list. A government source described new taxes generally as among the hardest measures to build a parliamentary majority for in the current Congress.Independent legal commentary has also questioned whether a tax at this rate could survive a challenge at all. It cites Spain's own constitutional ban on confiscatory taxation, and EU free-movement-of-capital rules that have previously struck down other Spanish taxes treating non-residents differently. This is informed opinion, not a court ruling, and it is not the reason the measure has stalled. It is simply one more reason not to treat its passage as close or certain.

Sources

Could Spain still pass something like this in the future?Politically, the topic of taxing non-resident buyers differently has not disappeared from Spanish debate. A future proposal, in some form, is possible. What can be said honestly today is that this specific announced measure has stalled for over a year. It was dropped from the government's own 2026 list, and has never reached a parliamentary vote. We track genuine legislative changes, not announcements, and would flag anything that actually passed and could affect a specific purchase.

Straight talk

So is there anything a foreign buyer genuinely needs to worry about here?

Not this specific measure. It was never aimed at EU citizens. It has not become law in the year and a half since it was announced, and the government itself has since dropped it from its own housing agenda. Treating a January 2025 political announcement as current Spanish law is the actual mistake worth correcting, not the tax itself.This does not mean Spanish tax rules for non-residents never change; they do. The genuine, currently applicable rates for owning, renting and eventually selling a property are covered in depth elsewhere on this site, rather than repeated here. What we do is track proposals that actually pass into law, not ones that make headlines. We flag anything real that would affect your specific purchase before you commit to it.

Frequently asked questions about the 100 % tax

Is there any real tax difference between an EU buyer and a non-EU buyer in Spain today?: Yes, in ongoing taxes on rental income and on a future sale, EU and EEA residents already get a more favourable rate than other non-residents under existing, currently enforced rules. This announced 100 percent measure is a separate, unrelated proposal that has not become law and, even as proposed, was never about EU citizens in the first place.
What tax do I, as an EU citizen, actually pay when buying property in Spain?: The standard purchase taxes that apply to any buyer, resident or not, EU or not: transfer tax on a resale property or VAT and stamp duty on a new build. Nothing in the announced non-EU measure changes any of that for an EU citizen. The full, current cost breakdown is covered in its own guide.
Why do so many articles and forums still talk about this like it already happened?: A striking headline about a 100 percent tax travels fast, and most coverage of the original announcement never followed up on what happened to the bill afterward. So here is what actually happened: the announcement was real, the bill exists on paper, and it has genuinely not become law.

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