Haggamania wrote:Hola , please correct if wrong but capital gains tax is only paid if property used as buisness ( rented )
I have lived in property - no buisness or rental so don't qualify for capital gain tax so full value of property should be my "nest egg"
If property sold before Spanish residency acquired surely this has nothing to do with Spanish tax government.
As Marcliff explained, if your property is sold before you become tax resident in Spain, it is not subject to Spanish capital gains. So, as you say, if your property is sold before Spanish residency acquired, it is all fine. However you were asking about the implications of renting for a while before buying. You could of course have sold up in UK also before renting , and just banked the money in anticipation of buying in Spain eventually, in which case again, no problem
It is just if you decide to rent sufficiently long to become tax resident in Spain before selling your UK property that a problem could arise. You then sell your UK property and you may well be liable to Spanish capital gains because you have sold it while being a Spanish tax resident. It is not like the UK where your primary residence is entirely exempt from capital gains. It used to be, pre-Brexit, that as a Spanish tax resident if you sold your main or primary residence and reinvested the proceeds in another main or primary residence, you would not be charged capital gains. But the property had to be in the EU, which obviously no longer applies to UK properties.
It is a little bit of a mine field, the Spanish capital gains charge could end up pretty steep ( they don't allow, for example for inflation etc, they'll tax you flat on the difference between the purchase price and sale price and that means if you bought your UK property a long time ago, it is likely to be a large amount.) But forewarned is forearmed; tbh any capital gains charge on your house is likely to be substantially higher than any money you might make out of renting your property in the Uk for a while before selling it . So really worth looking into this carefully and contemplating selling up before you become tax resident .