Spanish Taxes for Investors: What IRPF and the Wealth Tax Do to Your Portfolio

This is an explainer, not tax advice. Rates change with each budget and each region, and your own situation decides what applies. What follows is how the two taxes that touch an investor in Spain are structured, and how Lait turns them into an estimate you can plan with.

IRPF: the savings income scale

Gains from selling stocks, ETFs, funds, crypto and property, plus dividends and interest, form the savings income base. It is taxed on a progressive scale that is separate from your salary. In 2026 the state scale runs from 19 percent on the first tranche to 30 percent on the top one, with steps at 21, 23 and 27 percent in between. The exact thresholds are in the tax view, per year.

Two things people miss:

• Losses offset gains, within the year and carried forward four years. A losing position you sell in December can cut the estimate on a winning one you sold in March.
• FIFO applies per security. If you bought a stock in three batches, the first batch bought is the first sold, whatever your average cost says. The portfolio shows average cost; the tax view walks the lots.

The wealth tax (Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio)

An annual tax on net worth above an exemption. The state minimum exemption is 700,000 euros per person, plus up to 300,000 euros for your main home. Each autonomous community sets its own scale and bonuses: Madrid and Andalusia bonify it fully (the state-level solidarity tax then applies above 3 million), Catalonia and the Balearics have their own scales, Valencia and others sit in between. Lait carries the rules of 15 communities and asks which one you live in.

The base is your net worth as of 31 December, valued by tax rules, which are not market rules: listed shares at the average of the last quarter, property at the highest of cadastral, purchase or checked value, crypto at market. Debts reduce the base.

Property: the main home rule

Your main home is exempt from wealth tax up to 300,000 euros, and its sale is exempt from IRPF if you reinvest in another main home within two years, or if you are over 65. A second property has neither. Lait treats the property you mark as main home differently in both estimates.

Crypto

Every swap between two coins is a taxable event in Spain, at the euro value of the moment, not just cashing out to euros. Staking rewards and airdrops are income when received. The lot-walking that FIFO requires is exactly why deduplicated trade history matters.

How the "if you sold today" estimate is built

• Every position's unrealised gain, by FIFO lots.
• Your year's realised gains and losses so far, netted.
• The savings scale of the tax year, applied to the net.
• Wealth tax on year-end net worth after exemptions, by your community's scale.

The result is one figure with a range, labelled as an estimate, next to your net worth. It changes when prices change and when you change region. It is there so that a 40,000 euro gain does not feel like 40,000 euros in your pocket, and so a December decision is made with the number in front of you.

What the estimate does not do

It does not know your other income, your deductions, your marital regime, or whether a fund transfer qualifies as a tax-deferred switch (in Spain, moving between investment funds usually does; moving between ETFs usually does not). Confirm the real figure with a professional before you act. Lait's job is to make sure you ask the question early, with the right order of magnitude.