The Spanish government seeks parliamentary approval to establish a new value added value of 21% for short -term tourist rentals – the double that is paid through the hotel rooms -, with which it intends to deal with the real estate crisis.
The maximum tax rate would apply to rents of less than 30 days and would affect about a third of the 94 million annual visitors received by Spain last year and who chose to rent a house instead of going to a hotel. At present, VAT does not apply to short -term rents in peninsular Spain, while those that are housed in hotels pay a 10%tax.
The measure is part of a broader bill that the socialist government could have difficulty approving in a deeply polarized parliament.
“We have to prioritize housing to live and cities for neighbors,” said the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, about the presentation of the bill (…), adding that “it joins a strategy of addressing all the possible answers to land, sea and air to solve all the possible answers to solve the problem of the housing that our country lives.”
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Spanish authorities indicate that tourist rentals should have the same VAT as hotels
Spain tries to find a balance between the maintenance of tourism as an economic engine and popular concern for the high cost of housing, since the owners opt for more lucrative tourist rentals.
According to a report from the Bank of Spain this week, the country has a deficit of 450,000 homes. Half of the Housing Park of the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands are tourist or non -resident housing.
Apartur, an association of owners of tourist departments in Barcelona, the second city of Spain, argues that short -term rentals should pay the same VAT as hotels and described the proposal of 21%as discriminatory.
The project also includes a measured measure, announced for the first time in January, to tax citizens from outside the European Union with a tax of up to 100% for the purchase of a home, unless it will be its first residence, as well as an increase in the taxes that the owners of empty housing must pay, including the second residences.
With Reuters information
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