Six Months to File Spanish Inheritance Tax, Five to Ask for More

The clock starts at the death, not at the discovery

Inheritance tax on a death accrues on the day the deceased or the insured person died, or on the day a declaration of death becomes final (art. 24.1 of Ley 29/1987). The return follows the same starting point: six months for acquisitions on death, including those of the beneficiaries of life insurance contracts, counted from the day of the death or from the day the declaration of death becomes final (art. 67.1.a of the ISD Regulation, RD 1629/1991). Every other case under the tax — gifts, chiefly — runs on thirty business days instead (art. 67.1.b).

Nothing in that article looks at the heir. It does not wait for a foreign grant of probate, for the will to be read, or for the moment somebody in Manchester or Rotterdam learns there is an apartment in Torrevieja. The same six months also govern the acquisition of a usufruct that falls in on the death of the usufructuary, even where the ownership was split by an act inter vivos years earlier — a common shape in Costa Blanca estates.

The request for more time expires a month before the return does

The competent office may grant an extension for a period equal to the filing period — another six months (art. 68.1 RISD). The application has to be made by the heirs, executors or administrators of the estate within the first five months of the filing period, accompanied by a certificate of the death registration, and stating the names and addresses of the declared or presumed heirs and their relationship to the deceased where known, the location and approximate value of the assets and rights, and the reasons the application is founded on (art. 68.2).

Two rules make the month-five cut-off absolute. If a month passes from the application without a decision being notified, the extension is deemed granted (art. 68.3). And no extension at all is granted where the application is filed after the first five months have run (art. 68.4) — not late, not partially: refused. A refusal is slightly kinder than silence would be, because the filing period is then extended by the days between the day after the application and the day the refusal is notified (art. 68.5).

What the extension costs, and what happens if it lapses

The extension is not free time. It is counted from the end of the six-month period set by art. 67.1.a and carries the obligation to pay the corresponding late-payment interest up to the day the document or the return is filed (art. 68.6). The same logic applies after a refusal: if that extension of days pushes the filing past six months from the accrual, interest is owed for the days elapsed since the end of the six-month period (art. 68.5).

If the extended period ends with nothing filed, the office may issue a provisional assessment on whatever data the administration holds, without prejudice to any penalties that may apply (art. 68.7). Separately, where genuine litigation or voluntary probate proceedings over the estate are under way, the filing periods are interrupted and start running again from the day after the decision closing the judicial proceedings becomes final (art. 69.1).

Why six months is short from outside Spain

The arithmetic is what hurts. The certificate of last wills cannot be applied for until fifteen working days have passed since the death — a Ministry of Justice procedure, not a tax rule — so the file cannot even open during the first fortnight. Each heir then needs a NIE, the deed of acceptance and adjudication has to be signed before a Spanish notary or through an apostilled power of attorney, and the estate has to be inventoried and valued before a single figure can be written on the return.

Measure those blocks against a five-month ruler rather than a six-month one. By the end of month four an heir abroad usually knows whether the documents will land in time, and that is the moment to decide: prepare the extension application, or accept that month six will be spent chasing an apostille nobody warned you about.

Plusvalía municipal runs its own clock, at a different counter

Where the estate includes urban land, the town hall wants a declaration of its own. For transfers on death the period is six months from the accrual, extendable to one year at the taxpayer’s request (art. 110.2.b of the consolidated Local Finance Act), against thirty business days for transfers inter vivos (art. 110.2.a). Note the difference in shape: that extension has no five-month cut-off written into the statute, but it is still a request, each ayuntamiento handles it under its own ordinance, and it does not arrive by itself because the inheritance tax one was granted.

Where the ayuntamiento has established self-assessment, payment is made within those same periods (art. 110.4). And the town hall finds out either way: notaries must send it, within the first fortnight of each quarter, an index of every document they authorised in the previous quarter that reveals the taxable event (art. 110.7).

If the six months have already gone

File anyway, and file before the administration writes to you. A return filed late without a prior demand carries the surcharge of art. 27 of the General Tax Act, which rises with the delay and excludes the penalties that would otherwise have been due; once the administration has made a formal move towards regularising the debt, that route closes and the penalty route opens. Our guide on late filing and regularisation sets out the scale and the reduction for paying in the terms the article requires.