Inheritance Tax in the País Vasco: A Foral Tax Outside the State System (2026)
Everything on this site's other comunidad pages describes the state-ceded system: a national law, Ley 29/1987, that each comunidad adjusts with its own reductions, scale, coefficients and bonificaciones. The País Vasco is not part of that system. Its inheritance tax is a foral tax, set independently under the Concierto Económico, and none of the figures elsewhere in this cluster apply here.
Information last verified on 23 July 2026. This page confirms only the attribution rule under art. 25 of the Concierto Económico (Ley 12/2002). The three Basque Diputaciones Forales' own tariff, reduction and bonificación figures were not individually verified in this review and are deliberately not stated here; check the relevant Diputación's own tax portal.
Why País Vasco is different: the Concierto Económico
Article 25.Uno of the Concierto Económico is unambiguous: «El Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones es un tributo concertado de normativa autónoma.» That single sentence is the reason this page cannot simply plug the state scale or a comunidad-style bonificación into a Basque inheritance the way the other regional pages on this site do. The Basque institutions write their own rules for this tax, not an adjustment layered on top of Ley 29/1987.
Who collects: the Diputación Foral by habitual residence
Immediately after establishing that the tax is concertado, art. 25 sets the attribution rule: «Corresponderá su exacción a la Diputación Foral competente por razón del territorio en los siguientes casos: a) En las adquisiciones 'mortis causa'... cuando el causante tenga su residencia habitual en el País Vasco a la fecha del devengo.» In plain terms, the Diputación Foral of the territory where the deceased habitually lived at death is the one that collects and administers the tax, the same residence-based logic the state system uses for the other comunidades, just applied within the Basque institutional structure instead.
Three territorios, three Normas Forales
Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa each maintain their own Norma Foral governing inheritance and gift tax, and each can set different bases, tariffs, reductions and bonificaciones from the other two. This review did not independently fetch or verify any of the three territories' own figures, so this page deliberately does not state a Basque tariff, reduction amount, or bonificación percentage. An estate connected to the País Vasco needs the applicable Diputación's own current text, not a figure imported from Madrid, Andalucía or any other comunidad on this site.
The Basque legítima: one third, collectively
Civil law compounds the difference. Where the general Código Civil regime reserves two thirds of the estate as legítima and Cataluña reserves only one quarter, the País Vasco's own civil regime reserves one third of the estate collectively among the entitled heirs. That collective structure, rather than an individual per-heir share, changes how the forced portion is distributed before any tax calculation begins. See the legítima and forced heirship page for the fuller civil-law picture across territories.
Where this fits
This page explains only why the state and comunidad rules elsewhere on this site do not apply in the País Vasco. For the state mechanism those other regions build on, see the inheritance tax overview, and for how the País Vasco compares as a category to the comunidades that do use it, see the inheritance tax comparison by comunidad.
This page is general legal information about the structure of the Basque foral tax system and does not constitute legal or tax advice in an individual case, and it does not state specific Basque tariff or bonificación figures because they were not individually verified in this review. Check the current Norma Foral of the relevant Diputación (Álava, Bizkaia or Gipuzkoa) before acting.
This page is general legal information about Spanish tax law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case. The controlling texts are the current versions in the BOE and each comunidad's consolidated tax rules, which change frequently.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the impuesto de sucesiones work the same way in the País Vasco as the rest of Spain?
No. Under art. 25 of the Concierto Económico, inheritance tax in the País Vasco is a foral tax set by the region's own institutions, not the state-ceded system that Ley 29/1987 and the comunidades' own bonificaciones create for the rest of Spain.
Which Diputación Foral handles my inheritance tax in the País Vasco?
Whichever of Álava, Bizkaia or Gipuzkoa the causante had habitual residence in at the date of death, under the attribution rule in art. 25 of the Concierto Económico.
Is the forced-heirship share the same in the País Vasco as elsewhere in Spain?
No. The País Vasco reserves one third of the estate as legítima, held collectively among the entitled heirs, which differs from both the two-thirds general regime and Cataluña's one-quarter share.