¿Por qué no interesan a los inversores estadounidenses las SOCIMI españolas?

Abstract

Attracting foreign capital is one of the aims of Spanish SOCIMIs. However they are not fulfilling this objective. Among other reasons, this is due to the tax costs that, sometimes, foreign investors assume under the Spanish Corporate Income Tax (at a rate of 19%), which is not creditable against their local Corporate Tax.
As argued in this article, a strong commitment to favor Spanish SOCIMIs requires a regulatory change that would allow foreign investors to eliminate the economic double taxation that occurs on income when corresponding dividends are distributed and the investor does not own, at least, a minimum percentage of the shares or the voting stock of a company which is resident of Spain (10% according to the Tax Treaty between Spain and USA). However, the mistrust of foreign investors in our economy -- resulting from high unemployment rates, doubts about the euro and other negative messages -- make any legislative reform unlikely.
Nevertheless there is no doubt that changing the current taxation SOCIMIs as well as adjusting asset values recorded on their balance sheets at prices demanded by the market, will help fostering these entities and will allow to the banks get rid of the massive property stock.