It begins with three numbers that most second-home buyers never learn until the first demand lands in the post. In Spain, the wealth-tax line sits at €700,000 of taxable net assets. In France, it sits at €1.3 million of real estate. In Italy — for a property inside the country's own borders — there is no line at all, because Italy levies no general tax on the wealth held within it. For a buyer choosing between a whole villa and a fractional share of one, those thresholds are not an abstraction. They are the quiet difference between an asset that generates a tax bill every year and one that, by its very structure, sits beneath the radar.
The reason a co-ownership share behaves so differently under these regimes is almost too simple to be interesting, and it is rarely spelled out for buyers. A wealth tax is assessed on the value of what you actually own. When you own one-eighth of a property through a structured LLC, alongside seven other vetted co-owners, the asset the tax authority assesses is the value of that eighth — not the headline price of the house. A €1.6 million villa is, to the wealth-tax system, eight separate holdings of roughly €200,000 each. And €200,000 sits a long way below the point at which Spain, France or Italy begins to take an interest. The whole-home buyer crosses the threshold on the day of completion; the fractional buyer, in the ordinary case, never approaches it. The way each country reaches that result differs, and the differences are worth reading closely — but the shape of the conclusion holds across all three. Our how it works guide sets out the ownership structure that makes this fractional assessment possible.
A note before the detail: what follows is general information, not personal tax advice. Wealth-tax thresholds interact with the rest of your estate, with the country you are resident in, and with any property you may already hold, and a qualified adviser should confirm your own position before you buy. But the structural logic is clear enough to set out plainly, country by country.
Spain: A €700,000 Line, and a Second Tax Above €3 Million
Spain is the European market where wealth tax is most discussed and least understood. The country levies an annual Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio — a wealth tax in the literal sense, charged on net assets. A non-resident owner is taxed only on Spanish-situated assets, and is entitled to the same €700,000 personal allowance that residents receive. The one relief a non-resident loses is the €300,000 exemption for a main home — logical enough, since a holiday property is by definition not a habitual residence. Above the allowance, the state scale runs from 0.2% to 3.5%, though the headline rate matters far less than where you buy: wealth tax is partly devolved, and the regional spread is enormous. Madrid applies a 100% rebate that cancels the tax entirely, Andalusia has effectively abolished its own charge, while Catalonia and the Balearics apply the full scale.
Layered on top is the Impuesto Temporal de Solidaridad de las Grandes Fortunas — the "solidarity tax on large fortunes" — introduced in 2022, originally as a temporary measure and since extended indefinitely. It applies to net wealth above €3 million at rates of 1.7% to 3.5%, designed to claw back what the regional rebates give away. For the co-owner, though, both taxes are largely theoretical. A one-eighth share of a quality Spanish villa priced between €1.2 and €2.4 million is an asset of roughly €150,000 to €300,000 — comfortably under the €700,000 allowance, and not in the same postcode as the €3 million solidarity threshold. The whole-villa buyer in Catalonia may file and pay every year; the eighth-share buyer in the same property, in most cases, files nothing. The underlying levies are covered in our Spain property tax guide for co-owners, and current Spanish inventory sits in the Spanish collection.
France: IFI, the €1.3 Million Tax That Looks Through Companies
France abolished its old all-asset wealth tax in 2018 and replaced it with something narrower and, for property buyers, more pointed: the Impôt sur la Fortune Immobilière, or IFI — a wealth tax on real estate alone. The threshold is €1.3 million of net taxable French real estate held on 1 January. Cross that line and the tax is calculated from the €800,000 band upward, on a progressive scale of 0.5% to 1.5%. Non-residents pay the IFI on their French property exactly as residents do.
The feature of the IFI that matters most to co-owners is its reach through ownership structures. The tax does not care whether you hold a French property directly or through a company: real estate owned via an SCI, an OPCI or any other vehicle — including a foreign company or an LLC — is pulled into the assessment to the extent that it represents French bricks and mortar. The structure, in other words, does not hide the asset from the IFI; it simply shrinks the asset to your fraction of it. And the fraction is the point. A one-eighth share of even a €2 million Côte d'Azur villa is around €250,000 of French real estate — well short of the €1.3 million threshold. The one caveat worth flagging is aggregation: the IFI sums all of your French real estate, so a buyer who already owns a home in France adds the share to that existing base rather than starting from zero. For most international buyers taking a first French position through co-ownership, the threshold remains a distant number. The French collection shows where those positions currently sit.
Italy: No Wealth Tax on the Home, but a Twist for Italian Buyers
Italy is the simplest case of the three, and the most reassuring for an inbound buyer: there is no general wealth tax on Italian real estate. The recurring annual charge on an Italian second home is the IMU, the municipal property tax, which is a levy on the property itself rather than on your net worth — and which we cover in the Italian property tax guide. A foreign buyer taking a one-eighth share of a villa on Lake Maggiore or the Sardinian coast faces no Italian wealth tax whatsoever on that holding.
The twist in Italy runs in the opposite direction, and it is one Italian buyers of European shares should know. Italy taxes its own residents on real estate they hold abroad, through the IVIE — the tax on the value of overseas property — which rose to 1.06% for 2024 onward, up from the long-standing 0.76%. An Italian resident buying a share in a French or Spanish co-ownership home would owe IVIE on the value of that share. But two features soften it almost to nothing: the charge falls only on Italian residents, not on the many other nationalities co-ownership buyers come from; and for property elsewhere in the EU, IVIE is assessed on the cadastral value rather than the market price, which is typically far lower. Even at the full market figure, 1.06% of a roughly €200,000 share is around €2,100 a year — and on cadastral value, materially less. Italy, in short, taxes the wealth that leaves the country, not the wealth that arrives in it.
Why the Fraction Sits Below the Line
Step back from the three regimes and a single structural fact explains all of them. Wealth-tax thresholds — €700,000 in Spain, €1.3 million in France, the €3 million solidarity line, even the existence of IVIE — are calibrated for whole estates and whole houses. A co-ownership share is, by construction, a fraction of a house: one-eighth of the value, one-eighth of the running costs, and one-eighth of whatever the tax authority chooses to assess. The buyer who purchases a €1.6 million villa outright is holding €1.6 million of taxable property; the buyer who takes one-eighth of the same villa is holding €200,000 — and using it roughly as many weeks a year as the whole-owner who, surveys consistently show, barely visits the home they fully fund.
Two caveats keep the picture honest. The first is aggregation: every regime totals your holdings within its own borders, so a share adds to any other property you own in that country rather than being assessed in isolation. The second, specific to France, is the look-through: the LLC or SCI does not make the asset disappear, it simply caps your exposure at your fraction. Neither caveat changes the conclusion for the typical international buyer making a first move into a market — it remains very difficult for a single fractional share to cross a wealth-tax line. This is the same structural efficiency that runs through the ownership model more broadly, and which we set out in the LLC advantage. None of it is about avoidance; it is simply that you own less, so you are assessed on less, while the lived experience of the home is barely diminished.
The Case: One More Place the Arithmetic Changes
Wealth tax rarely makes the shortlist of reasons people give for choosing co-ownership. The reasons that come first are the obvious ones — the capital you do not tie up, the running costs you do not carry alone, the management you never have to think about. But the wealth-tax line belongs on the same list, because it is one more place where owning a fraction quietly rewrites the numbers. The whole-home buyer in Spain or France may find that the privilege of a barely-used villa includes an annual return to the tax office; the co-owner, holding the same access to the same house for 44 to 45 days a year, is assessed on a holding the system was never really built to reach. Over time, that is what a share comes to feel like — not a diminished version of ownership, but a second life abroad with the friction quietly removed.
For buyers weighing the structure across markets, the country collections show where COP currently holds inventory and what a specific share would cost — the Spanish, French and Italian homes each sit, by design, below the wealth-tax lines described above. To talk through how a share would interact with your own estate and country of residence, speak with our team — and confirm the specifics with a qualified tax adviser before you commit.
