The measure was one of a dozen unveiled on Monday by the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, as the government seeks to quell mounting anger over housing costs that have soared far beyond the reach of many in Spain.
Sánchez sought to underline the global nature of the challenge, citing housing prices that had swelled 48% in the past decade across Europe, far outpacing household incomes.
“The west faces a decisive challenge: to not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants,” he told an economic forum in Madrid.
The proposed measures include expanding the supply of social housing, offering incentives to those who renovate and rent out empty properties at affordable prices and cracking down on seasonal rentals. In Spain just 2.5% of housing is set aside for social housing, a figure that lags drastically behind countries such as France and the Netherlands, said Sánchez.
Just make it so the dwelling has to be occupied by the owner for 9-10 months a year. Every month it is unoccupied, the owner has to pay the value of a monthly rent as tax multiplied by the number of months it has been unoccupied -->
month 1 = rent x 1 month 2 = rent x 2 month 3 = rent x 3
I think that’ll be hard to ignore for most landlords - foreign or not.
Occupancy is hard to monitor and easy to fake though. Purchases are impossible to miss and are a single point of enforcement as opposed to an ongoing burden like you’re suggesting. Though I do appreciate the spirit of your plan.
How do you confirm whether the property is occupied?
You have to make a rental agreement. Here in India it has to be registered with the government and pay a nominal registration charges. So when filing your taxes you join your lease agreement, which can be verified by the registrar.
That’s not really relevant.
The proposition is to tax people who own property but do not reside there in.
My question is how does the Gestapo know where an owner lives.
For example, if my wife and I own our home and have a holiday home by the sea, we would simply say that one of us resides in the holiday home, and it’s not practically possible to disprove that.
How does the state know which house you occupy / where you live?
They do not.
They don’t. They trust what I tell them.
Great. Would you be willing to declare your primary residence at another dwelling you don’t live in just to help out a friend? Do you expect that to be an easy thing to do every month in order to trick the system? Do you think the landlord of the residence you’re living in would simply lie down and take a fine if they know you’ve signed a contract to live there and declare it as your primary residence?
My wife or son or daughter or nephew would certainly be willing to declare my holiday home as their residence. They probably spend some time there anyway.
Again, if they do, they won’t be able to declare another home as their primary residence. So, sure, your daughter can declare your holiday home as her primary residence, but then her landlord in Madrid will get in trouble and as we all know: shit rolls downhill. The landlord will pass the fine on to your daughter. And if she is the landlord, good job, she’ll have to pay the fine directly.
Most people don’t live alone though.
I declare our actual home as my residence, my wife declares our holiday home as her residence, my daughter who lives in an apartment she owns lists her boyfriend as the tenant and she declares our other holiday home as her residence.
Also, what about people who legit need a second dwelling. Loads of people have an apartment in the city for the work week and a home in the country for the family, or split their time between two cities for business / work reasons. Are these situations illegal now?
It’s just a dumb idea that sounds edgy that you haven’t really thought through.
This description of your houses smells like rich people from miles man.
“Other holiday home” - proletariat, surely.
I was ready to engage until this sentence. I know now that you’re just going to waste my time.
Customs
I don’t understand.
Everytime you leave the country you need to have your passport stamped at customs, and eventually you’ll need to re-enter the country and show your ID or passport. At re-entry, you can be checked. This plus a yearly in-person check mandate can make sure you stay there.
Yeah… Which customs? I can just step in a car and drive trough multiple countries without ever needing to show my passport.
The comment I replied to isn’t really talking about foreign ownership, but ownership in general. That is, owners need to live in the properties they own or pay taxes. Obviously many locals have never left the country and never cleared customs.
Additionally, most countries don’t bother to stamp your passport anymore, a kiosk just scans the chipped page in your passport and takes your photo.
Finally, a yearly in-person mandate to check where people are living is absolutely bonkers. Absolutely no one wants the gestapo coming to their house every year to confirm that they really live there.
The post is about non EU residents right? Spanish citizens might own multiple properties and I cannot stop that. And also, nobody is going to come and check if you live there, all that’s necessary is a physical letter to the location requiring you pass by a police office or citizen’s bureau in person and identify. Literally 1 minute’s worth of a job. And it would only be for non-EU residents.
This comment chain is not specifically about non-eu residents.
Letters do not confirm where someone lives. It would be trivial to work around that.
This might shock you, but if you announced a law whereby everyone has to go to the police station once a year to confirm where they live there would absolutely be blood in the streets. It’s a ridiculous over reach and a gross invasion of privacy.
In tax legislation the goal is to be broad based, which means easy to administrate and difficult to avoid.
The solution to this problem which people have been talking about since the 1940s is land tax. Tax the fuck out of all land, but allow people to apply for an exemption for 1 property. It will never become law because the powerful people that make law own property and do not wish to pay tax.
Where I live in Spain this is exactly the case, it’s called a Padrón, and pretty much everyone adheres to it. Without it it’s impossible to do most any business in Spain.
Brutal, I love it