Wedding Gifts Remain Out Of The Hacienda Focus

Weddings, baptisms and communions are increased in May. This is confirmed by the same National Institute of Statistics, which states that most weddings take place between April and September. And hand in hand, usually under it, money is transferred to the honorees.

According to the law, the Treasury can demand that the amount obtained in cash or gifts be taxed in the declaration of donations and inheritance. The experts at Tax Down, a firm specializing in tax advice, recognize that tradition still wins the game over the law and the Treasury has not faced specific campaigns to collect between these transfers between individuals.

The gifts received are not taxed through the income statement, but are taxed by inheritance and gift tax. Taxation depends on each autonomy and the degree of kinship with the donor, or the value of the donation, regardless of whether it is movable or immovable.

The law does not exist a minimum exemption, but in practice few are those who declare what they have received or donated. According to the law, absolutely everything would have to be declared.

Although there is a state regulation for these gifts, considered donations for all legal purposes, the Autonomous Communities can apply their specific legislation (the national law only applies in the absence of the autonomous one).

Thus, there are autonomies in which it is more profitable to marry and / or baptize a child, such as in Madrid, Andalusia, Murcia and La Rioja. In these communities, a 99% discount is applied on the tax quota in donations between parents and children, that is, only 1% of the tax quota would have to be paid to the Treasury.

In other communities, that same gift would have a higher taxation. The difficulty is that a hypothetical legal declaration should apply a different tax depending on the degree of kinship, the taxpayer’s tax base after deducting expenses, and so on.

The same thing would happen with the gift of cash. Experts advise opening an account for donations and thus be able to justify the nature of the income. The envelope in hand supposes to control black money. In any case, in practice there are no material means to control all weddings and no special operations are even carried out in the case of marriages of people with a foreseeable greater movement of funds.

What it does seem that the Treasury tends to control is the flow of money with service companies associated with this type of celebration. This is the case of florist services or catering companies. In Tax Down they recognize that “custom prevails over regulation,

Spain is among the countries of the European Union (EU) with the lowest rate of marriages per thousand inhabitants, with 3.5 unions, according to data from the European statistical office Eurostat, which highlights the continued fall in weddings for decades.

In 2019 the EU countries with the highest number of marriages in relation to population were Cyprus (8.9 unions per thousand people), Lithuania (7), Latvia and Hungary (both 6.7) and Romania (6.6 ), followed by Slovakia (5.4), Denmark and Malta (5.3).

At the opposite extreme, the lowest rates were around 3 marriages per thousand inhabitants and occurred in Italy (3.1), Portugal and Slovenia (both 3.2), followed by France, Spain and Luxembourg (all 3.5). Since 1964, the marriage rate in the European Union has dropped from 8.0 per thousand people to 4,