Five years on from the Constitutional Court ruling that broke the old Plusvalía formula, most sellers still pay whatever number the Ayuntamiento of Marbella's auto-calculator generates. They shouldn't. The post-2021 régime gives the taxpayer a binary choice between two calculation methods, and on a typical Marbella resale the cheaper method is 5-15× cheaper than the default. Pick the wrong one and you fund the municipal budget out of pocket; pick the right one and the entire tax can collapse to a four-figure number.
Plusvalía Municipal — formally the Impuesto sobre el Incremento de Valor de los Terrenos de Naturaleza Urbana (IIVTNU) — is the municipal tax on the gain in land value over the holding period, levied at sale, donation, or inheritance. Governed by Real Decreto Legislativo 2/2004 (TRLRHL), fundamentally reformed by Real Decreto-ley 26/2021 following the Constitutional Court ruling STC 182/2021 of 26 October 2021, which declared the previous formula unconstitutional. The reform gives the taxpayer the right to choose the lower of two methods:
1. Objective method (método objetivo) — based on cadastral land value × statutory annual coefficient × municipal rate 2. Real-gain method (plusvalía real) — based on actual sale price minus actual purchase price, multiplied by the proportion of land value (as % of total cadastral value), then by municipal rate
On a Marbella villa bought 2015 at €2M, sold 2026 at €3M (€1M gross gain), the objective method typically calculates €60,000-120,000; the real-gain method calculates ~€8,000-15,000 if the land share of cadastral value is moderate. Always model both, choose the lower. The seller has 30 days from sale to file Modelo 405 (or Marbella's local equivalent) and elect the method.
Three Constitutional Court rulings progressively dismantled the old Plusvalía formula:
After STC 182/2021, Spain had no Plusvalía Municipal at all for nine days — the most chaotic gap in modern Spanish tax law. Real Decreto-ley 26/2021 (filed 8 November 2021, retroactive to 10 November) restored the tax with the new dual-method structure. The dual method has been in force ever since.
Setup: A villa in Sierra Blanca, Marbella.
Method 1: Objective (método objetivo)