Road tax is one of the fixed costs of owning a car. Like insurance, it is an outlay that must be taken into account when planning the annual maintenance cost of a car as we do with other variable expenses. In this last section we refer to invoices for repairs, tolls and parking, as well as possible traffic fines.
The circulation tax, also known as the number, is a municipal tax that is applied to all motor vehicles. It is paid once a year, as a general rule between April 1 and June 30, and allows the vehicle to circulate on the streets and highways of all of Spain. The city councils are responsible for the management of this tax, so the payment of the tax is made in the municipality where the car has its tax address on January 1 of the current year.
The regulations allow city councils to apply their own rates on the Tax on Mechanical Traction Vehicles -this is its specific name- from a minimum amount stipulated by law and offer various reductions. For this reason there are great inequalities between what is paid in some cities and others, creating authentic tax havens for registration tax. This is what in its day was denounced by Associated European Motorists.
This entity announced in 2021 that in very small municipalities in terms of population, they have thousands of vehicles domiciled in said population. Cases as relevant as that of the town of Sarratella (Castellón), with 95 inhabitants and 10,016 registered vehicles, or Las Rozas de Puerto Real (Madrid), with 29,897 vehicles and only 555 registered inhabitants, are obvious.
The condition to establish the fiscal domicile of the car in a certain municipality is that the owner of the vehicle is registered in said locality. For this reason, in practice this strategy is only used by owners of large fleets of vehicles, thus creating the tax havens that we referred to above.
However, even in the event that we have moved to another municipality and the circulation tax is cheaper in the town we have abandoned, the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) urges us to make the change of tax domicile. This ensures that notifications will reach their recipient.
To request the change of tax address of a vehicle you have three ways to do it. The management can be done online by contacting the electronic headquarters of the DGT; by phone calling 060; or in person. In the latter case, you must go to the town hall where you are registered (you can check here if the procedure is carried out) or to any Traffic office.
First of all, you must fill out the application for change of tax address. If the address does not match the one that appears in the INE registration data, you must present proof of change of address. If there is no change of municipality, it will be enough to present a receipt for water, electricity, gas... The other documents that must be provided are the DNI and the vehicle's circulation permit.
If you request a change of address from the Canary Islands, Ceuta or Melilla to the Peninsula or the Balearic Islands, you will have to provide the document that the car has been cleared through customs.
