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When reselling your home, you can use the
transfer tax ‘get back’. The rule is that only
transfer tax must be paid on the capital gain of the property if
the property gets a new owner within 6 months.

Please note that who is entitled to this ‘benefit’ must
you agree in the purchase contract. In most cases, it is agreed that
the benefit accrues to the seller.

What this looks like in practice is explained with the help of an example:

1st sale January 1
Jan will get his new home delivered at the notary on January 1. The purchase price was €250,000. So the transfer tax he pays is 2% of €250,000 = €5,000.

2nd sale Jan. 31
On May 31, Jan sold the house to Mr. and
Ms. de Jong for €300,000. The key transfer is on June 29, so neat
within 6 months. There is now only a need for the buyers to pay 2% to the tax authorities.
transfer tax is to be paid on the capital gain of the property to
know: €300,000 minus €250,000 = €50,000. However, this does mean that the
buyers have a big advantage. They do not have to pay over €250,000.
transfer tax to be paid. Buyers pay only 2% transfer tax on the capital gain of €50,000, which is €1000 transfer tax.

But this benefit actually belongs to the seller. Therefore, it is usually agreed in a purchase contract that the buyers must repay this benefit to the seller. The buyers refund to the seller the transfer tax paid by Jan on Jan. 1 of €5,000. Thus, with this, the seller recovered his transfer tax paid in January of that year.

3rd sale Aug. 1
Suppose Mr. and Mrs. de Jong break up and they resell the house on Aug. 1 to Sjaak for the same price they bought it for, namely €300,000. The property will again be delivered to the notary within 6 months of them taking possession of it themselves. Then the following applies. Buyer Sjaak has to pay 2% transfer tax on €300,000 (=€6000,-) but gets a €1000,- discount on this. That €1000, in fact, is the transfer tax paid by Mr. and Mrs. de Jong less than 6 months ago and it may be offset.

Paying transfer tax simple explained:

What you need to grasp about whether you will get a transfer tax refund is the following:

  1. In principle, you always pay transfer tax.
  2. But if transfer tax was paid less than 6 months ago by the previous owner (the person selling the property to you), then this amount may be deducted from the amount you have to pay.
  3. If no transfer tax was paid at all at that time (less than 6 months ago), then there is nothing to offset and you will have to pay the full transfer tax.
  4. In principle, you as the buyer get this benefit, but by default the purchase agreement actually regulates that you as the buyer must give this benefit to the seller. So you would normally have to pay €5000,- transfer tax, but the seller has already paid €5000,- or more in transfer tax himself less than 6 months ago, then you as a buyer have €5000,- advantage and you give that €5000,- to the seller. This is all taken care of by the notary.

If you paid 8% transfer tax because you are an investor/real estate investor, do you get the transfer tax back?

That depends on who you are selling it to. If you sell the property to another real estate investor, they must also pay 8% transfer tax and then you get your 8% transfer tax back in full.
But if you sell your property to a buyer who pays 2% transfer tax, you will only get back 2% of the 8% paid. So that means you will NOT get back 6% of the transfer tax you paid.
If the buyer pays no transfer tax at all (starter exemption), then you get ZERO transfer tax back.
Note: here too the rule applies that the property has changed hands within 6 months. So if you buy a property to renovate and sell it and the renovation takes longer than 6 months, you can completely blow the whistle on the transfer tax refund.