Buying a used yacht in Spain; pitfalls

[pcatterall]

A group of us are considering buying a used yacht in Spain so will value any advice mainly concerning taxes ( VAT), registration etc.
I guess if we buy a Spanish registered yacht VAT should be easy to check and we would have to register each new owner on some sort of Spanish register?
Our previous yacht was uk registered and we had to pay some sort of annual fee through the marina.
Anyway, pointe5rs will be very much appreciated.

 

[wallacebob]

If Spanish registered you’ll need 3 yearly inspection of safety equipment, not onerous. Insurance obviously. As Spanish registered you’ll need appropriate sailing qualifications according to size/type. ICC may be okay, but be prepared for questions from Guardia. If you have NIE or TIE may be a tax on asset?. Others will be along shortly with more info………

 

[Skipper Felice]

Take care with price - funds - and payment / money transfer.

In Spain many boats (locally) change hands with some cash money ... It is not unusal to make a good contract with about 40% of the real price.
Many boats in Spain (Spanish Flag) have a low value in the Spanish tax register: The owner/seller has to pay less anual taxes for that!

An example: Yacht price and value is 500k ... 15 years old used boat / VAT ok EU payed: The owner has a tax declaration of 100k. The boat will be sold at 100k ... and 400k will be transfered out of the contract. Otherwise the seller has to pay additional taxes for the difference of the uplift from tax value = contract is 500k then the seller has to pay 500k - 100k = serveral xx thousend euros on 400k!

It is important, that you know this for the final price and how to deal with this issue. If the boat is soled over official broker channels at the official price they include the uplift taxes that the seller has to pay.

 

[Tranona]

No real problems. As you say a Spanish registered boat will have a record of VAT status. It could then be removed from the Spanish register and you can then register it on the SSR (assuming you are resident in the UK). No restrictions on how you use it. If the boat is originally UK then you need to check that it was in the EU on 31/12/2020. Owned/registered elsewhere in the EU will also usually have some evidence of VAT status, but really is not a big issue and the same applies for deregistration and re-registration.

 

[pcatterall]

Thanks everyone. The usual good info!