A gestor is a mix of a lawyer and an accountant. If you buy a house, start a business or want to live in Spain, having a gestor is really recommended.
The tax-office automatically presume you have a gestor, and want to know the address of the gestor; they use it as the post address for all correspondence.
If you need a gestor to check the deed and other paperwork of the house you are purchasing, there is always the question if you should trust the gestoria the real-estate agent is advising. Until now we always have, but if there is an issue with papers, legalising a house of anything else, you might consider using another gestor then your real-estate-agent or the seller is using.
Yes you can. If you meet the requirements, you do not have to pay import tax when importing. The car must not be too new (at least 6 months in your name) and must have driven at least 5000 km.
That doesn’t mean it’s completely free. The car must be approved.
- You need to export your car in your country of origin. That means driving with special export license plates.
- You have to start the import process immediately upon arrival, because you only have 14 days to arrange things.
- Unless the car is younger than 4 years old and you have an EU certification (approval) of the car, the car really needs to undergo an inspection and an engineer has to make an EU compliancy report for the car.
- You need to pay registration costs.
- There is the circulation tax (not very high in Spain).
- You do need new plates.
- Insure the car with a Spanish insurance company.
Spain is (in general) in the top 3 countries with the best internet in the EU.
Realistically, in the countryside you often still have slow ADSL internet (2-5 MB connection). Fortunately, there are many companies that offer a Wimax connection, with a speed of 10-40 MB per second.
In the city, the bigger villages and residential areas around it, there is often fiber optic with an internet connection of 300 to 1000 MB per second. Although the cables sometimes still hang in the air and wobble from pole to pole, the connection is extremely stable and in our experience better and faster than, for example, in the Netherlands.
We do advise you to take internet from one of the larger and better internet providers.
Capital (wealth) tax is better organised than, for example, in the Netherlands.
There are two kinds of capital (wealth) tax.
- Taxation on the possession of your assets
- Taxation on capital gain (profit) of your assets.
Taxation on the possession of your assets
- The standard exception is 700,000 euro per person.
- There is an additional exemption of 300,000 per person for owning your house. Please note: this concerns the house where you officially live, not a holiday home.
Taxation on capital gain (profit) of your assets.
- You pay on average about 20% tax on the real return. Losses, related management costs and the like are deductible.
The following capital assets and investments are liable for capital gains tax.
- Stocks
- Collectibles
- Bonds
- Jewelry
- Buildings
- Precious metals
- Lands
- Houses and flats
* For Spanish tax residents (including foreigners that is), the tax rate starts at 19% for the first €6,000 profit obtained and increases thereafter to 21% when the gain is between €6,000 and €50,000, 23% when the gain is between €50,000 and €200,000, and 26% for any gain over €200,000.
Well, it depends. If you live in or below, let’s say Barcelona, it’s warm enough to not need central heating. That doesn’t mean you do not need heating in winter. Spain can be really cold; the houses in Spain are not really well insulated and precisely because of the relatively warm winters, the humidity is high, so that the cold can feel a bit colder.
We advise to heat locally. That means for example a wood-stove in the living area or even better, a pellet-stove, and airconditioning in the rooms you for heating and cooling. It works perfect, is fast and it’s the cheapest option.
Your gardner is right. Palmtrees of the type ‘Canarias’ need to be treated against a specific insect (beetle) that eats the palmtree from the inside. The name of the insect in Spanish is ‘Picudo rojo’. Once the insects laid their eggs inside the palmtree, there is still a change the tree might be saved, but lots of palmtrees don’t survive.
Moving to Spain is a wonderful move, but means you need to make some changes in your life. And we don’t mean integrating the Spanish way of life, but administration, insurance, paperwork, banking and much more.
This page provides useful information and explains some terms you need to understand.
DISCLAIMER
The information on this website is written with care and mostly from personal experience. We are not responsible for errors or actions based on this information.