Glenn Wickman
FOUR towns in the Valencia region have become tax havens for car registration.
Serratella (Castellon) has a total population of 95, but more than 10,000 vehicles were registered in 2019 alone.
These were followed by an extra 2,360 in 2020.
This translates as each resident in Serratella officially owning 25 cars, the highest percentage in the Valencian Community.
But it is not the only one.
Castelfabib and Puebla de San Miguel (Valencia Province) and Relleu (Alicante) have similarly ridiculous figures for vehicle ownership per inhabitant, making it very obvious that something fishy is going on.
The reason is that registration tax is much lower in these towns, prompting rent-a-car fleets and other businesses to register their company vehicles there instead of where they are actually based.
These four are among a list of 25 small municipalities in Spain that are becoming known as ‘car tax havens’, as the number of registered vehicles is higher than the padron town census.
Local councils have the power to increase the basic charge or apply discounts of up to 75% as they see fit, leading to huge differences in price.
On a national level, a study by the Madrid-based Associated European Motorists has revealed that seven Spanish towns – five in Madrid and one in Barcelona provinces – with population figures of between 500 and 14,000 residents account for 37.5% of all company vehicle registrations in the country.
