Introduction

The Wealth Tax was established by Law 19/1991, dated 6 June, and was materially payable until 1 January 2008, when Law 4/2008, dated 23 December, which abolished the Wealth Tax, made the monthly refund system for Value Added Tax general and introduced other changes to the tax regulations ( BOE of the 25th), eliminated the obligation to pay the tax by establishing a state bonus of 100% on the full amount and repealing the formal obligations relating to the self-assessment of the tax, the filing of the declaration and, where applicable, the payment of the tax debt.

However, the effects of the economic crisis made it necessary, through Royal Decree-Law 13/2011, of September 16 ( BOE of the 17th), to recover it with two important new features:

• Its reinstatement is temporary and, therefore, the aforementioned Royal Decree-Law 13/2011 initially contemplated it only for the years 2011 and 2012. However, its application has been extended since then for successive years. For 2020 by Royal Decree-Law 18/2019, of December 27, which adopts certain measures in tax, land registry and social security matters (BOE of the 28th).
• Its extraordinary nature is reinforced aimed at ensuring that only taxpayers with special economic capacity contribute, for which the limit of the exemption for the habitual residence was raised to a maximum amount of 300,000 euros and the minimum exempt amount has been set at 700,000 euros , although it must be remembered that the Autonomous Communities have broad regulatory powers over this last point for their residents and some have modified the amount of the minimum exempt amount.