Municipal Plusvalía and Inheritances: the Town Hall Can Verify the Declared Acquisition Value If It Does Not Reflect Market Value at the Date of Death (DGT V0406/2026)

A binding ruling that reshapes how to prove the absence of land-value increase

The Binding Consultation V0406/2026 of 26 February 2026, issued by the Spanish Directorate-General for Taxation (DGT), clarifies a very common issue when selling property that comes, fully or partly, from an inheritance: which acquisition value must be used for the IIVTNU (municipal plusvalía) and what powers does the Town Hall have to review it?

The answer is clear-cut: the acquisition value for IIVTNU purposes is the market value at the date of the deceased's death and, if the value declared by the taxpayer does not correspond to that date, the Town Hall may open a value-verification procedure.

1. The case: a sale after a mixed acquisition (purchase + inheritance)

The taxpayer in this consultation intended to sell an urban plot of land. The peculiarity lay in its origin:

• One half was acquired by purchase.
• The other half was received upon the death of the mother, with the Inheritance and Gift Tax (ISD) return filed late, at the moment the deed of acceptance and adjudication was signed.

The question was whether that late ISD filing prevented the application of the non-taxation rule of Article 104.5 TRLRHL (where the taxpayer proves that no land-value increase has occurred).

2. One transfer = one taxable event

The DGT reminds taxpayers that the IIVTNU is triggered by the transfer of land ownership. Even if the property has been acquired at different times (partly by purchase, partly by inheritance), if it is sold in a single transaction, there is one single taxable event and one single tax assessment.

To determine whether the non-taxation rule of Art. 104.5 applies, or whether the real-gain method of Art. 107.5 TRLRHL is preferable:

• The transfer value (one) is compared with the acquisition value, which may be one single value or several partial values that must be added together to produce a global acquisition value.
• If the result is negative, the non-taxation rule applies.
• If the result is positive, it is compared with the objective taxable base (cadastral coefficients) and the lower of the two is chosen.

> Key idea: the calculation is global, not partial: you do not run two separate plusvalías just because the right of ownership has two different origins.