It has been estimated that close to 60,000 British families have been hit with a hefty inheritance tax (IHT) bills for properties and any assets that they have inherited in Spain.

Startlingly, charges are believed to be in the region of £400 million.

The Spanish government has levied IHT of up to 35 per cent on non-residents while Spanish residents paid close to nothing.

Needless to say, non-residents are up in arms at what they consider to be unfair tax treatment of EU citizens and the European Commission are agreeing. In March, a legal case was brought to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which argues that Spain was infringing on EU treaty freedoms. When the verdict is announced, it is possible that it could result in a flood of thousands of Brits reclaiming their tax thus forcing Spain to amend its IHT tax laws.

Although the number who are believed to have wrongly paid IHT stands at around 60,000, it looks like only 40,000 will be able to claim it back due to Spanish legal time limits which prevent claimants from making a claim after four years from the tax payment date.

Spanish Legal Reclaims is an action group which has been set up to represent those caught out by the policy. The group is led by the very same lawyer who was victorious in a Capital Gains Tax (CGT) reclaim case against the Spanish government which saw more than £280 million returned to 90,000 British families after the European Court case.

The group are confident that the verdict will work in their favour as the EU doesn’t bring cases to the ECJ unless they believe that they are legally sound.

Sally Veal of the SpainBuyingGuide.com and Costa Brava resident told told us that she knows a few people who have been stung by excessive IHT. “One of my neighbours inherited her property from her late parents. When she was asked to pay the tax, she signed the cheque without consideration that she might have been overcharged. She is in the process of trying to claim back the really quite sizeable sum and it seems a lot of other folk are in the same boat”.

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