Gift tax in Spain on money or a flat from family abroad, if you live in Valencia: deadline and requirements

Who pays, and which tax

A gift is taxed on the person who receives it, not on the person who gives it (Law 29/1987 on Inheritance and Gift Tax, article 5.b). It falls under Inheritance and Gift Tax (Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones), not income tax: what is subject to Inheritance and Gift Tax is not subject to personal income tax (Personal Income Tax Act, article 6.4). If the recipient is resident in Spain, which is decided under the income tax rules (Law 29/1987, article 6.2), the gift is taxed here in full, wherever the money or the property is and wherever the donor lives (article 6.1). Whether the money comes from Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom or anywhere else does not change who pays. It changes the evidence you need of where the money comes from.

Which region, and which rules

For a gift of money to someone resident in Spain, the tax is handled by the autonomous community (region) where the recipient resides, and that region's rules apply (Law 22/2009 on regional financing, article 32, paragraphs 2.c and 5). For this tax, you are treated as resident in the region where you have spent the most days of the five years before the gift (temporary absences count as time spent there), and you are presumed, unless shown otherwise, to be present where your main home is (article 28.1.1.º.b). For anyone who arrived in Spain recently, or moved from another region, that count is the first thing we review, because the reliefs that can be claimed depend on it. The Basque Country and Navarre are different: there the tax is their own (foral) tax, and the Basque Economic Agreement and the Navarre Agreement have their own rules on which authority applies (Law 12/2002, article 25, and Law 28/1990, article 31).

Living in the Valencian Community: the reliefs

Valencian law (Law 13/1997 of the Generalitat) gives two reliefs on gifts within the close family. First, a reduction of the taxable amount: 100,000 euros for children aged 21 or over, for the spouse and for parents; for children under 21, 100,000 euros plus 8,000 euros for each year they are short of 21, up to 156,000 euros; grandchildren follow the same scale by age, and grandparents get 100,000 euros. Adopted children and adoptive parents count as children and parents. For those limits, all gifts from the same donor in the previous five years are added together (article 10 bis.2.a). Second, a 99 % rebate on the tax that remains, for gifts to the spouse, parents, children, grandchildren and grandparents (article 12 bis.1.b), and for gifts to anyone with a recognised disability of at least 65 %, or a permanently recognised intellectual or mental disability of at least 33 %, in which case this rebate replaces the others (article 12 bis.1.c).

Brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces have no reduction for kinship (only the disability reduction of 240,000 euros, for a disability of at least 65 %, or a permanently recognised intellectual or mental disability of at least 33 %, article 10 bis.2.b), but they do have a rebate of 25 % of the tax on gifts (article 12 bis.2.b, which refers to blood relatives of the second and third degree in the collateral line). Valencian Law 5/2026 has already set that rebate at 50 % for gifts made from 1 June 2027 (its article 25). The conditions below apply to them too. Because the 25 % becomes 50 % on 1 June 2027, the date of a gift between these relatives changes the tax.

The conditions that are most often missed

The document. Both reliefs require the gift to be made in a public document, in practice a notarial deed (escritura pública), or to be formalised in that way within the filing period. For gifts of money that, counting this one and the other gifts from the same donor to the same recipient in the previous three years, do not exceed 4,000 euros or the equivalent value in foreign currency, the deed can be replaced by documents signed digitally through a qualified trust service under Regulation (EU) 910/2014, unless the validity of the transaction requires another form. This is the wording introduced by Valencian Law 5/2026 (articles 21 and 22) for gifts made from 11 August 2026.

The origin of the money. When money is given, the reduction and the rebate only apply if the origin of the funds is properly evidenced and, in addition, the document states where the money comes from and identifies how it is delivered, for example the bank transfer (articles 10 bis.2 and 12 bis.4). A deed that does not record where the money comes from and how it is delivered does not qualify, even if it is signed before a notary, and the requirement also applies below 4,000 euros.

A complete return, on time. The rebates, both the 99 % and the 25 %, only cover what is included in full in a self-assessment filed within the deadline, or filed late but before any prior demand (requerimiento) from the tax authority (article 12 bis.3).

The deadline: one month for a gift of money

The tax becomes chargeable on the day the gift is made (Law 29/1987, article 24.2). If you live in the Valencian Community and the gift is money, you have one month from that day to file form 651 with the Valencian Tax Agency (Agència Tributària Valenciana) (Law 13/1997, article 12 ter.One.b). The State regulations give thirty working days from the day after the gift (Royal Decree 1629/1991, article 67.1.b); in the Valencian Community the one-month period of Valencian law is the one that counts for gifts it handles, such as money, while a gift of real estate abroad follows the State period (see below). In other regions their own law has to be checked.

If the gift is a flat or house abroad

When parents living abroad give their child, who lives in Spain, a property located in another country, the child is still taxed here, because a Spanish resident is taxed wherever the asset is (Law 29/1987, article 6.1). What changes is who deals with it. The regional financing law only gives a region gifts of real estate located in its territory (Law 22/2009, article 32.2.b), so the return for this gift is not filed with the Valencian Tax Agency but with the Spanish Tax Agency (Agencia Tributaria), unless the child lives in the Basque Country or Navarre, which have their own rules. Even so, the child is entitled to apply the rules of the region where they reside (Law 29/1987, second additional provision, paragraph One.1.d): for a resident of the Valencian Community, the Valencian reduction and rebate, with the same conditions, starting with the public document. Form 651 is filed with the Spanish Tax Agency within thirty working days from the day after the gift, according to the instructions for the form, which is the State period (Royal Decree 1629/1991, article 67.1.b), not the Valencian month.

Giving the flat is not the same as selling it and giving the money. If the parents sell the property in their country and give their child the price, the gift is a gift of money: it is dealt with by the region where the child lives, with that region's deadline and with the requirement to evidence the origin of the funds, which in that case is the sale itself. If the deed of gift is signed before a notary in another country, we check before signing that the document meets the public-document requirement, because the reduction and the rebate depend on it.

If tax has already been paid abroad

A Spanish resident who pays a similar tax abroad on the same gift can deduct in Spain the lower of two amounts: the tax paid abroad, or the result of applying the average effective rate of the Spanish tax to the part relating to assets or rights located outside Spain and taxed there (Law 29/1987, article 23.1).

What decides the result

With these gifts, besides the amount, what is paid depends on four things decided beforehand: which region you are resident in for this tax, what is given and how (money, a flat, or the price of a flat sold abroad), how the origin of the money is documented in the donor's country, and when and in what form the gift is signed. If both parents give, each one is a separate donor and the limits are counted for each of them. If the money is to buy a home in Spain, the purchase and the gift are prepared together, because the purchase has its own taxes. Once the gift is made, residence and what is given no longer change, and the document can only be completed within the filing period, which is why the case is reviewed before the money is sent.

If you do not live in Spain

If the person receiving the gift is not resident in Spain, they are only taxed here on what is in Spain (Law 29/1987, article 7), and the case is dealt with, in general, by the Spanish Tax Agency; for money located in Spain, they can apply the rules of the region where it has been for the most days of the previous five years (second additional provision), with form 651 and thirty working days from the day after the gift. The logic is close to that of inheritances, which we explain in our guide Inheriting in Spain as a non-resident heir.

How we work

Remotely and in writing, in English. Documents arrive by email, questions are answered by WhatsApp or email (voice notes are welcome; the reply is written), and we prepare the self-assessment. Before the money moves we check residence, the applicable rules and what the document must say, and you know the amount and the basis for it before anything is filed. If you, or the family member who is giving, prefer Russian, the same guide is available in Russian, and in Spanish there is the general guide to gifts from parents to children in the Valencian Community.