Tax and accounting in A Coruña

Tax residence arrives without you asking for it

Nobody signs a form to become tax resident. You either are or you are not, on two statutory tests: spending more than one hundred and eighty-three days of the calendar year in Spain, counting sporadic absences, or having the main centre of your economic interests here. There is also a presumption that looks at where a non-separated spouse and any minor children live.

Where two countries treat you as resident at the same time, the treaty breaks the tie with a set of rules in order: a permanent home available to you, the centre of vital interests, where you habitually live, and nationality. They are not applied all at once and they are not a menu: you work down them in that order, and the evidence for each step is prepared. The document that closes the argument with the other administration is the certificate of tax residence, and there are two kinds — the ordinary one and the one issued for treaty purposes — which do not do the same job. We look at it in certificate of tax residence.

Passing money to your children: Galicia sets the tax, but not always

The Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones, Spanish inheritance and gift tax, is devolved to the autonomous communities, and Galicia has its own reductions for descendants, generally requiring a public deed before a notary and, depending on the case, a specific use for the money. The amounts and the requirements change from one year to the next, so you will not read a percentage here: the rule in force on the day the tax falls due is checked, and for a gift that is the day it is formalised.

What is worth knowing in advance is which community is competent, because it is not chosen. On a gift of money, what governs is where the funds have been located for most of the immediately preceding years; on a gift of property, where the property is; and where the donee has lived abroad, what is looked at is where they had their habitual residence in the preceding five years. If the money sits in a Swiss or German bank and the child lives in France, the analysis changes completely. The map is in which region is competent.

The house here while you live there

Plenty of people from here keep a flat in the city or a house in the comarca while they remain abroad. That means one Modelo 210, the non-resident income tax return, per property and per owner, every year, whether it is let or empty. An owner resident in the European Union, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein is taxed at 19 % and may deduct costs; an owner resident outside that group is taxed at 24 % on the gross income, with no deduction at all. Those are articles 24 and 25 of the Non-Resident Income Tax Act.

Where the property belongs to a couple, each of them files their own return for their own share. A single return covering the whole property is wrong even where one bank account receives everything, and it is the correction we make most often on a first year taken over from somebody else.

Who writes to us from A Coruña

Situation	The first question to answer
Returning from Switzerland on retirement	From which year they are resident and what income enters then
Wanting to help a child buy a flat	Which community is competent and what the Galician rule in force requires
Keeping a flat here while living abroad	Modelo 210 per owner and the rate that follows residence
Claimed as resident by two countries	The treaty tie-breakers and which certificate to ask for
Inheriting from a relative who emigrated	Regional competence, assets abroad and the six-month deadline

Our way of working in A Coruña

We begin with the calendar rather than the tax, because knowing on what date each thing happens usually moves the result more than any other decision. A gift formalised in December or in January can fall under different rules.

We are lawyers and we write in Spanish, English and French, which these files need: a good part of the paperwork comes from banks and administrations abroad and has to be read in full rather than taken from a summary. Where the answer depends on a criterion that is genuinely open, we say that it is one. And where a foreign adviser is needed, you appoint yours and we coordinate with them; we do not hand you a network we do not have.

An A Coruña couple in London with the flat standing empty: five years of Modelo 210

A couple who have lived in London for years still own, half each, a flat in the Ensanche that they do not let: they use it in summer and at Christmas. They have never filed anything in Spain. For that flat each of them owes one Modelo 210 a year for imputed income — the notional income Spain taxes on property that is not let — and the United Kingdom, outside the European Union since 2021, puts them at 24 %.

With 110,000 € of valor catastral and assuming the 1.1 % rate, the imputed income is 1,210 € a year, 605 € per owner, and each owner's tax is 145.20 €. If they regularise on 15 October 2026 on their own initiative, the cost per owner looks like this:

Tax year	Deadline ended	Position on 15 October 2026	Surcharge per owner
2025	31 December 2026	Still in time	0 €
2024	31 December 2025	Nine full months late	10 %: 14.52 €
2023	31 December 2024	More than twelve months	15 %: 21.78 € plus interest
2022	31 December 2023	More than twelve months	15 %: 21.78 € plus interest
2021	31 December 2022	Time-barred at the end of 2026 unless something interrupts it	15 % plus interest, if filed

The amounts are small, and that is why they get put off for years. The problem is not the tax: it is that without those returns there is no clean way to sell the flat, inherit it or show a Spanish bank that everything is up to date. How the surcharge is calculated is in calculating the surcharge, and any action by the tax agency on 2021 before the end of the year interrupts the limitation period.

What an A Coruña non-resident with a flat in the city files each year

If the flat…	Form	Deadline for tax year 2026
Is empty or used by the family	210 for imputed income, one per owner	1 April to 31 December 2027 (until 23 December with direct debit)
Is let	210 for the rental income, one per owner	1 to 20 April 2027 (until the 15th with direct debit)
Is let for part of the year	Both, each for its own days	Each in its own window

What the United Kingdom does with that same income is a matter for its own system: a UK resident usually declares the A Coruña flat there too and subtracts what was paid in Spain under the treaty between the two countries. That is reviewed by whoever handles their taxes in London; what we leave ready are the receipts for what was paid here, which is what they will ask for over there.