Five years on from the Constitutional Court ruling that broke the old Plusvalía formula, many sellers still pay whatever number the Ayuntamiento of Marbella's auto-calculator generates. They shouldn't. The post-2021 régime gives the taxpayer a choice between two calculation methods, and the two can produce very different bills. Pick the wrong one and you fund the municipal budget out of pocket.
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
Always model both, and choose the lower. Plusvalía municipal is the seller's tax on a sale; the declaration is due within thirty working days of the deed (Article 110.2 of the Haciendas Locales law). If the seller is a non-resident individual, the buyer is liable to the town hall in the seller's place (Article 106.2), so the amount is retained from the price.
STC 182/2021 left Spain, for a short period, with no valid way to assess Plusvalía Municipal at all. Real Decreto-ley 26/2021 of 8 November 2021 restored the tax with the new dual-method structure. The dual method has been in force ever since. Real Decreto-ley 26/2026 sets new maximum coefficients for the objective method from 1 December 2026, provided Congress ratifies the decree.