Selling your Fuerteventura home as a tax resident in 2026: the capital gain, the three exemptions and the plusvalía

You bought in Corralejo or Caleta de Fuste, you live here, you pay your income tax here — and now you are selling. Two taxes wait at the notary's door, and both are yours: the income tax on the gain, which for a resident runs from 19 % to 30 % on the 2026 scale, and the municipal plusvalía, which your town hall computes on the land under the house. What most sellers do not know is that the first has three exemptions wide enough to bring a €20,000 bill to zero, and that the second has a legal way of being much smaller than the council's first calculation.

This is the piece for the tax resident. If you live abroad, the rules are different in kind — a 3 % retention at the notary and a separate non-resident return — and our colleagues at olgacaballero.com cover them in selling as a non-resident. The buyer's taxes are in our guide to buying a home in Fuerteventura. Here: what a resident pays, how the exemptions work, and a worked example on a Corralejo flat.

Two taxes, both the seller's

A resident who sells a home declares the capital gain in the annual income-tax return (IRPF), in the savings base, together with interest and dividends. Nothing is withheld at the notary: the whole tax is paid the following spring. The plusvalía municipal — properly the tax on the increase in value of urban land — is a separate, optional municipal tax: each council decides whether to levy it and at what rate, up to a legal ceiling of 30 %. In a sale it is the seller who owes it, within thirty working days of the deed. Both taxes are computed from the same deed, but on different numbers: the income tax on what you really gained, the plusvalía on the cadastral value of the land.

The gain: what you really paid against what you really got

The gain is the difference between the transfer value and the acquisition value, and the law defines both generously in the seller's favour if the paperwork was kept.

The acquisition value is the price you paid plus the taxes and costs of buying — the ITP or IGIC and stamp duty, the notary, the registry, the lawyer — plus the cost of improvements: an extension, a new roof, a pool. Repairs and maintenance do not count, and neither does mortgage interest. If the home was ever let out, the acquisition value is reduced by the minimum depreciation the law deemed you to take while it was rented, whether you deducted it or not — a quiet penalty on owners who rented before selling.

The transfer value is the price you receive minus the costs and taxes you pay to sell: the agency's commission, the energy certificate, the plusvalía municipal itself. Since 2015 there is no inflation adjustment of the purchase price, so a home bought in 2005 is taxed on its nominal gain.

Two special cases. A home that came to you by inheritance or gift takes as acquisition value the figure declared for inheritance or gift tax, plus the costs of that transfer, and the date of death or gift as its acquisition date — a 2019 inheritance sold in 2026 is taxed only on the rise since 2019. And a loss is not wasted: it offsets other gains of the year, then up to 25 % of your interest and dividends, and whatever remains carries forward for four years — unless you buy the same property back within a year, in which case the loss is parked until it leaves you for good.

The 2026 scale — the same in the Canaries as everywhere

The savings base is taxed by a state scale and a regional scale that the law fixes at identical figures, so the Canary Islands cannot soften it. Combined, the 2026 rates are:

• 19 % on the first €6,000 of gain;
• 21 % from €6,000 to €50,000;
• 23 % from €50,000 to €200,000;
• 27 % from €200,000 to €300,000;
• 30 % above €300,000 — the top rate raised from 28 % for 2025.

The scale runs on the gain, not the price. A €300,000 sale with a €95,500 gain never touches the 27 % or 30 % steps.

The worked example. A Corralejo flat bought in 2015 for €180,000, with €14,000 of ITP, notary and registry on top: acquisition value €194,000. Sold in 2026 for €300,000, with a €9,000 agency commission, a €150 energy certificate and €1,350 of plusvalía municipal (computed below): transfer value €289,500. Gain €95,500. Tax: 19 % of €6,000 is €1,140; 21 % of the next €44,000 is €9,240; 23 % of the remaining €45,500 is €10,465 — €20,845, an effective 21.8 %. That is the figure before any exemption.

Exemption one: you buy another home to live in

If the home you sell was your habitual residence and you reinvest the amount obtained in a new habitual residence, the gain is exempt — wholly if you reinvest all of it, proportionally if you reinvest part. The conditions are precise:

• "Amount obtained" means the sale price minus the principal still owed on the mortgage that financed the home you sold. With €60,000 outstanding on the €300,000 flat, the sum to reinvest is €240,000, not €300,000.
• The window is two years either side of the sale: the new home may have been bought up to two years before, or be bought up to two years after. If the reinvestment falls in a later year, you state your intention in the return of the year of sale.
• Partial reinvestment, partial exemption. Reinvest €180,000 of the €240,000 and three quarters of the gain is exempt; the remaining quarter — €23,875 — is taxed on the scale: about €4,900 instead of €20,845.
• "Habitual residence" is the tax definition: you lived in the home continuously for three years, having moved in within twelve months of buying it — with the usual exceptions for death, marriage, separation, a job move or a first job. And the home keeps that character for two years after you move out, so a seller who left in 2025 and sells in 2026 still qualifies.
• Break a condition — the new home is not bought in time, or you do not live in it — and the exempt part is added back to the year of the sale with a complementary return and late-payment interest.

Exemption two: you are over 65, or in severe dependency

A seller aged 65 or more who sells the habitual residence pays no income tax on the gain — no reinvestment, no ceiling, no conditions beyond the three-year residence rule and the two-year grace after moving out. The same applies to a seller in a situation of severe or great dependency under the dependency law. For a couple, each spouse's half is judged by that spouse's age: at 66 and 63, half the gain is exempt and half is not, which is a reason to check the calendar before signing a private contract.

The over-65 seller who sells another property — a second home, a plot — has a second door: the gain is exempt if the amount obtained, up to €240,000, buys a life annuity within six months.

Exemption three: the home is handed to the bank

A gain that surfaces when the habitual residence is given to the lender in payment of the mortgage — or sold in a judicial or notarial foreclosure — is exempt, provided the owner has no other assets that could have paid the debt. It is the law's recognition that a forced sale is not a profit. In the same spirit, the division of a jointly owned home, the liquidation of the matrimonial regime and the transfers between spouses ordered in a divorce are not taxable events in themselves, as long as each co-owner takes their share and no more: the gain waits until the home is sold to a third party.

Bought before 1995? The abatement coefficients

Owners who bought before 31 December 1994 — a good share of the island's retirees — keep a transitional benefit. The part of the gain generated up to 19 January 2006 is reduced by 11.11 % for every year of ownership beyond two counted to 31 December 1996: a home bought in 1990 has seven such years, five in excess, so that slice of the gain is cut by 55.55 %. The rest of the gain is taxed normally. Since 2015 the benefit is capped: it applies only while the transfer values of everything you have sold under it since then stay under €400,000, and it tapers on the sale that crosses the line. The arithmetic is worth doing before you decide which of two properties to sell first.

The plusvalía municipal in 2026

The council's tax is computed on the cadastral value of the land — the "valor catastral del suelo" printed on the IBI bill — multiplied by a coefficient that depends on the number of full years you owned the home, then by the council's rate. The coefficients are state maxima that councils may lower but not exceed; the 2026 update was carried in December's omnibus decree, which Congress repealed in January, so the 2024 table still applies: from 0.15 for one year, dipping to 0.09 for twelve to fifteen years, and rising to 0.40 at twenty years or more.

The rate is the council's. On Fuerteventura, La Oliva applies the legal maximum of 30 %; Puerto del Rosario applies a sliding rate by holding period — 25 % up to five years, 22 % to ten, 20 % to fifteen, 19 % to twenty — on coefficients of its own that cannot exceed the state's; the other councils set theirs in their own ordinances, and the tax being optional, the first question is whether yours levies it at all.

Two rules since the 2021 reform protect the seller. There is no tax at all when the land did not gain value between purchase and sale, measured on the prices in the two deeds with the land's share of the cadastral value applied to both. And when the land did gain, the seller may ask the council to tax the real increase instead of the coefficient formula whenever the real figure is lower. In practice, after a long holding the formula is usually the smaller number.

The example again, on the Corralejo flat: land value €45,000, eleven full years, coefficient 0.10, base €4,500, La Oliva's 30 %: €1,350. The real-gain alternative — €120,000 of price increase, of which the land's 41 % share is €49,000 — would cost €14,700, so the formula stands. The same flat in Puerto del Rosario, with its own coefficient of 0.08 for eleven years and its 20 % rate for that period, pays €720. Whichever it is, the plusvalía paid is deducted from the transfer value in the income-tax return.

The calendar

A sale signed in 2026 goes into the Renta 2026 return filed between April and June 2027, on Modelo 100; with a gain above €1,000 the return is compulsory even if your other income would have exempted you from filing. Nothing is retained at the notary from a resident seller — but only if you prove you are one: the buyer must withhold 3 % from a seller who cannot show a certificate of tax residence, as the non-resident piece explains, and our 183-day rule guide tells you how to obtain the certificate. The plusvalía is declared or self-assessed with the council within thirty working days of the deed. Owners who let the home while they owned it should also close the Modelo 210 years if they were non-residents then; the gain is taxed on the whole holding period regardless.

Where we come in

Our property desk in Caleta de Fuste and Costa Calma computes the gain from your deeds and invoices, tells you which exemption you qualify for and what it is worth, files the plusvalía with the council inside the thirty days and the income-tax return the following spring. See buy and sell assistance and tax advisory, or book a consultation — we reply within one business day.

Common questions

How much tax does a resident pay when selling a home in Fuerteventura in 2026?
The gain — sale price minus selling costs, minus the purchase price plus buying costs and improvements — is taxed on the savings scale: 19 % to €6,000, 21 % to €50,000, 23 % to €200,000, 27 % to €300,000 and 30 % above. A €95,500 gain pays €20,845 before exemptions. The plusvalía municipal is added on the cadastral land value, at the council's rate of up to 30 %.

Do I pay tax if I buy another home with the money?
Not on the part you reinvest. If the home sold was your habitual residence and you put the whole amount obtained — price minus the outstanding mortgage — into a new habitual residence within two years before or after the sale, the gain is exempt; a partial reinvestment exempts the same proportion of the gain.

I am over 65: is the sale of my home tax-free?
Yes, if the home was your habitual residence, with no need to reinvest. A spouse under 65 pays on their half. The plusvalía municipal is not exempt by age.

Can I avoid the plusvalía municipal?
If the land did not gain value between your purchase and your sale, measured on the two deeds, the tax is not due, and you may ask the council to tax the real increase whenever it is lower than the coefficient formula. Otherwise it is due within thirty working days of the deed, at your council's rate — 30 % in La Oliva, 19 % to 25 % by holding period in Puerto del Rosario.

Facts verified in September 2026 (Personal Income Tax Act, Law 35/2006, articles 33 to 36, 38, 49, 66, 76 and 96 and transitional provision nine, with the savings scale as amended by Law 7/2024; Income Tax Regulation, RD 439/2007, articles 40, 41 and 41 bis; Local Finance Act, RDL 2/2004, articles 59, 104, 106 to 108 and 110, with the coefficient table in force after the January 2026 repeal of RDL 16/2025; the plusvalía ordinances of La Oliva, number 5, and Puerto del Rosario, BOP Las Palmas 158 of 30 December 2022). Figures are worked examples; have yours computed before you sign.