Inspections of Large Fortunes

El Confidencial reported on 31 August a story that confirms something advisers have been noticing for months: the inspections of large fortunes. Wealthy families are commissioning preventive reviews of their structures in order to get ahead of the Spanish Tax Agency (AEAT). In many cases these are internal audits of the family business itself.

The report contains a figure that deserves attention. The AEAT unit that monitors significant fortunes went from an average of roughly 953 cases a year between 2018 and 2024 to 1,329 in 2025, about 39 per cent more. The tax debt assessed, by contrast, grew by only 9 per cent, from 501 to 547 million euros.

Considerably more actions for a similar revenue result. That difference is worth dwelling on.

What that difference indicates

Such a marked increase in the number of actions, accompanied by moderate growth in the debt assessed, suggests that control has been extended to a wider perimeter of taxpayers, and that a good part of the checks concern legal characterisation rather than concealment.

It is an understandable change from the Administration’s perspective, since it now has far more information available. For the taxpayer it simply means that the likelihood of having to explain and document a properly designed structure has risen appreciably.

The guidelines of the 2026 Tax Control Plan (Plan de Control Tributario), approved by Resolution of 11 March 2026, point precisely in that direction: external signs of wealth that do not match what has been declared, abusive use of companies to avoid Personal Income Tax (IRPF) and Wealth Tax, the real estate sector, and changes of tax domicile.

A nuance from day-to-day practice

The report is well constructed and correctly reflects what law firms are seeing: minimum shareholding, assets used in the business, visible management functions, real activity. There is little to add on those four points.

It is worth, however, completing the picture with something that weighs as much as or more in everyday work. Cases in which the exemption is lost altogether are the minority. What is common is that the exemption applies, but only in part.

Article 4.Ocho.Dos of Law 19/1991 (Wealth Tax Act) is clear on this. The exemption does not cover the full value of the shares. It covers only the proportion that exists between the assets necessary for the activity, less the debts deriving from it, and the company’s net assets.

A simple example, for illustration only. A company has net assets of 10 million, of which 7 million correspond to assets necessary for the activity. The exemption extends to 70 per cent of the value of the shares. The remaining 30 per cent is taxable, even though the company impeccably meets the three requirements and nobody disputes that it is a functioning family business.

This is the part that almost never comes up in initial conversations with the client. And it is the part where the most money is left on the table, silently, year after year.

The three requirements, and a useful clarification

It is worth recalling them in their exact terms.

• That the entity’s principal activity is not the management of movable or immovable assets.
• That the shareholding is at least 5 per cent individually, or 20 per cent together with the spouse, ascendants, descendants or collateral relatives of the second degree.
• And that someone in the family group performs effective management functions, remunerated with more than 50 per cent of their business, professional and employment income.

On the first requirement a clarification is called for, because a 60 per cent threshold for assets used in the business is often cited that does not come from the law. The rule requires that it not be the case, for more than 90 days of the financial year, that more than half of the assets consist of securities or are not used in economic activities. The legal threshold is one half. The 60 per cent is a safety margin that advisers commonly apply to absorb fluctuations in the balance sheet, and as such it is very reasonable.

Distinguishing the margin from the requirement helps in a procedure. It makes it possible to know when one is below one’s own prudence policy, which is one thing, and when one is genuinely outside the law, which is quite another.

Why this weighs more than it seems

Wealth Tax is usually seen as a manageable annual charge. The problem is that the 95 per cent reduction in the Inheritance and Gift Tax (ISD) relies on that same exemption and on the same proportionality rule.

Put differently: a wrongly calculated allocation percentage costs little each year and a great deal on the day of the succession. That is where the error multiplies.

What is worth reviewing

If anything justifies the preventive review described in the report, it is not so much confirming that the requirements are met, which in most cases they are, as measuring precisely the scope of the exemption and correcting what can be corrected while there is time.

That means looking at the balance sheet with a tax eye and not only an accounting one. Identifying cash with no documented justification of its purpose, properties made available for family use, shareholdings in other entities, and assets whose allocation to the business is doubtful. And doing so beforehand, because an approved and dated investment plan is of use, whereas the same explanation given during an inspection is not.

At Vicens Advisors we routinely work with large fortunes and, within that field, the family business exemption is one of the matters that occupies us most. Not so much for its recognition, which is usually clear, as for its scope, which almost never is. If you would like to know what percentage of your shares is actually exempt, we will be glad to help you calculate it calmly.

For an overview of how to reorganise a family business under a parent company, see our tax guide to family holding companies in Spain.

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