Moving to Spain with your furniture and car tax-free

This mechanism is called relocation tax relief and covers what the Agencia Tributaria (the Spanish Tax Agency) calls personal property: personal effects and furniture, household linen, provisions corresponding to normal family requirements, household pets and portable instruments required for your profession. Alongside these, it includes bicycles and mopeds, private motor vehicles and their trailers, camping caravans, private pleasure craft and private aircraft.

The relief operates on 2 levels at once: you do not pay customs duties and you do not pay import VAT. For the car there is a 3rd saving, the special tax on certain means of transport, which is the registration tax, and this follows its own path and its own deadline.

There are express exclusions: alcoholic products, tobacco and tobacco products, commercial means of transport (a van used for your business, for example) and professional equipment other than portable instruments. Anything that, by its nature or its quantity, looks commercial is also not allowed: 20 identical televisions are not household goods.

You do not have to request anything in advance. The relief and the VAT exemption are requested on the import declaration itself, the DUA (Single Administrative Document), and that is where they are justified. This is exactly the point where a mistake costs money, because once the goods are cleared, redoing the declaration is much more expensive than doing it right.

There are 5 conditions and they are all checked. First: having resided outside the customs territory of the European Union for at least 12 consecutive months before the move. Second: that the goods have been in your possession and you have used them at your former residence for at least 6 months before leaving it (the period rises to 12 months only for vehicles, boats or aircraft originally bought under diplomatic or consular exemptions). Third: intending to use them in Spain for the same purpose they had there. Fourth: clearing them through customs within 12 months of establishing your residence here. Fifth: not lending, pledging, renting or transferring them during the 12 months following the acceptance of the declaration by customs, unless you inform customs beforehand.

For the VAT exemption, a nuance is added: the goods must have been acquired under the normal taxation conditions of their country of origin, without having benefited there from any exemption or refund upon departure. In other words, a car bought tax-free for export does not qualify.

Proof that you lived abroad is accepted by any means. The Agencia Tributaria cites as examples proof of tax residence, the address on your identity document, home insurance, electricity, water, gas or landline bills, an employment contract or your children's school enrolment. You usually have to provide several of these at once.

For departure and arrival, the list is stricter: a document proving deregistration from the previous residence (for a Spaniard, deregistration from the Consular Register; for other nationalities, consular deregistration or any communication of the change of residence to an authority in the country of origin), your DNI, your European Union citizen registration certificate or your TIE (foreigner identity card), and registration on the padrón (municipal register) of the new municipality with the registration date.

Prior use of the goods is proven with a detailed list of what is being imported, with its estimated value and the date, at least approximate, of acquisition. This is the valued inventory of the move, and you should do it before sealing the boxes, not at the dock.

The car involves 2 different files. At customs it travels with the rest of the move and benefits from the relief. At the Agencia Tributaria it also needs exemption from the registration tax, which has its own requirements: 12 months of residence outside Spanish territory, acquisition under normal taxation conditions, 6 months of use at your former residence before leaving it, requesting registration within the deadline and not transferring the vehicle during the 12 months following registration.

The deadline is the detail that most people miss. The general regime gives 30 days from when the vehicle begins to be used in Spain, which is normally the date of its introduction, but when it is a relocation with the right to this exemption, the period is extended to 60 days. These are not 60 days to register it at your leisure: they are 60 days to submit the declaration and request registration.

The form is form 06, which is the declaration for exemption and non-subjection cases that do not require prior recognition from the Administration. Relocation is one of them, so you do not need to ask for permission beforehand with form 05: you declare it and attach the documentation. Form 06 is submitted through the electronic headquarters of the Agencia Tributaria, which has its own option to provide the supplementary documentation for the file. For registered professionals, this electronic submission is also the mandatory route, so your entire file travels via the internet.

If the exemption does not apply or the deadline has been missed, the tax is self-assessed with form 576 and paid on the market value of the vehicle on the accrual date, using the average sale prices approved each year by the Ministry as a reference. This is when you see what was at stake, because the rate depends on CO2 emissions and can reach 14.75%.

Half of the process changes, not all of it. Coming from France, Germany or Italy there is no customs or DUA, because your furniture and car are already Union goods: there are no customs duties or import VAT to exempt. The moving truck crosses and that is it.

What does not disappear is the registration tax. First registration in Spain means Spanish tax, wherever the car comes from, and that is why you must submit form 06 within the same 60 days to apply the relocation exemption. This is the most expensive mistake for those arriving from the Union: assuming that, since there is no customs, there is nothing to declare.

There is 1 case where Spanish VAT does appear when coming from the Union: if the car is new for tax purposes, meaning it was delivered within 6 months of its first entry into service or has not travelled more than 6,000 kilometres. If you bought the car shortly before coming, that purchase is taxed here even if it is made by a private individual.

And the Tráfico (Traffic department) part remains, identical in both cases: technical inspection, Spanish number plates, insurance contracted in Spain and municipal circulation tax every year at the town hall where you are registered on the padrón.

The order matters. First customs (if coming from outside the Union), then the registration tax declaration, then the technical inspection, which will be the vehicle's first in Spain, and finally registration at the Provincial Traffic Headquarters by appointment. Tráfico will not register it if there is no prior proof of tax payment or recognition of the exemption.

To the inspection you must take proof of ownership, proof of import duties and taxes, the owner's driving licence, the insurance policy and the vehicle's technical specification sheet. If the car does not have a European certificate of conformity, which is common for vehicles from outside the Union, a reduced technical specification sheet is issued in Spain through an individual homologation, and the Headquarters usually asks for an official translation of the foreign documentation.

With the driving licence, the clock ticks separately and is shorter. A non-EU licence is valid in Spain for a maximum of 6 months counting from when you acquire your normal residence here. After that period it ceases to be valid: either it is exchanged, if your country has an exchange agreement with Spain, or you have to get a Spanish licence by taking the exams.

The exchange can be requested from the very moment you have residence, without waiting for the 6 months to run out, and this is the sensible thing to do. For motorcycle and car categories, countries with an agreement exchange without tests with the tasa (official fee) II.3, of €28.87; truck and bus categories usually require an exam and go with the tasa II.1, of €94.05. You also need a 32 by 26 millimetre photograph, the psychophysical aptitude report from a medical examination centre, declarations of not being deprived of the right to drive and of not holding another European licence, and the original licence with its copy.

If your licence was issued by a European Union or European Economic Area country, it remains valid here. There is only 1 precaution: if it is one of those that do not expire, you will have to renew it once 2 years have passed since you established your residence in Spain, so that the Spanish validity periods apply to you.

The Canary Islands are within the customs territory of the Union but outside the VAT area. A move arriving there from a third country is cleared in the same way with relief, and the tax exempted is not VAT but IGIC, with practically identical requirements. The registration tax also exists in the Canary Islands, with its own rates, 1 point below the mainland ones in each bracket.

There is a Canarian trap you should know about: if the car was taxed in the Canary Islands and you take it to the mainland or the Balearic Islands within the first year, you have to pay the difference in rates. This is not required when that second movement responds, once again, to a relocation that meets its requirements.

Ceuta and Melilla are outside the customs territory and the VAT area, with their own tax on production, services and imports. For the registration tax, their rate is 0% in all emissions brackets, so the relocation exemption there does not change the result, but the day the car is moved to the mainland does change it.

In the Basque Country and Navarre, the registration tax is governed by the same substantive rules, but it is managed by the corresponding regional tax authority, not the state Agencia Tributaria. The office changes and the forms change, but not the requirements or the deadlines. That is why no state figure can be taken for granted without first checking where you are going to register on the padrón.

Managora puts together the complete file and submits it on your behalf: the import DUA with the relocation relief and the valued inventory, form 06 for the registration tax within 60 days through the electronic headquarters of the Agencia Tributaria, the coordination of the technical inspection and the vehicle documentation, the registration before the Provincial Traffic Headquarters and the exchange of your driving licence. You can see the updated amount for each one on its page: DUA, Single Administrative Document; Registration Tax (form 576) and relocation exemption; Registration of an imported vehicle before the DGT; and Exchange of a foreign driving licence.

What we do not do for you is very little and it is best to say it clearly: you have to undergo the psychophysical examination for the exchange in person, because you are the one being examined, and the original driving licence must be handed in at the Headquarters. The latter is not a requirement of the rule, which allows acting before the Administration through a representative: it is just that our service is online and that specific step is resolved at the Tráfico office. Everything else, including the preliminary checks and the submission of the files, is handled by us.

Before charging anything, we check if your case fits: if you have been away for less than 12 months, if the car has been in your possession for less than 6 months or if your deadlines have already passed, we tell you beforehand, with the alternative that works best for you. If you want to start, open the page for the procedure you need and we will tell you on the same day what documents are needed and in what order.