You pay even when the house stands empty
Imputed property income is what surprises a foreign owner most: for a dwelling that is at your disposal and not let, an income is declared, calculated on the cadastral value — the administrative value the Spanish land registry assigns to each property — at 1,1 % or 2 % depending on when that municipality's cadastre was last revised, apportioned across the days of the year it stood at your disposal.
It is not a fine and it is not a mistake: it is how non-resident income tax works. We develop it in imputed income for non-residents.
A note on two words that appear on every Spanish property bill. The cadastral value is set administratively and is normally well below the market price; it is what imputed income and the IBI are both calculated on. The cadastral reference is the code identifying each property, and it is the reason a flat, a garage space and a storeroom can count as three properties even though you bought them on the same day and use them as one.
19 % or 24 %, and why the difference is bigger than it looks
Article 25 of the non-resident income tax act sets two rates for income obtained without a permanent establishment: 19 % for residents of the European Union, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, and 24 % for everyone else. But the real gap is not there; it is in article 24. Someone resident in the EU, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein may subtract the costs directly connected with the letting; someone resident outside, in practice, is taxed on the gross receipts.
On a letting with community fees, IBI — the annual municipal property tax — insurance and commissions, that difference weighs a good deal more than the five points of rate. It is also the point at which the rules have been argued over for years in the light of the free movement of capital, and we say it for what it is: argued over, not settled.
The certificate your own country issues to prove where you are resident is valid for one year. Once it has lapsed, the double tax treaty does not apply itself. It is the document most often missing when an enquiry letter arrives, and the easiest one to have ready in time.
One Modelo 210 per property and per owner
Here is the multiplication that throws married couples: if the house belongs to both of you, there is not one return, there are two, each for its half. If you also have a storeroom or a parking space with its own cadastral reference, they multiply again.
The deadlines are not those of the Spanish resident return either: the year's imputed income is filed during the following year, and rental income has its own grouping. You have it in non-residents and in the Modelo 210 on rental income.
And a warning about the empty months in particular: imputed income is declared even in a year with no tenant, no advertisement and no key handed to anybody. It is the commonest reason an owner who was sure they had nothing to file receives a letter several years later.
Who writes to us from Murcia
| Who | What they usually face |
|---|---|
| British couple with a house on the coast | Two Modelos 210 per dwelling, the 24 % rate since Brexit and a residence certificate kept current |
| Norwegian or Irish owner | The 19 % rate and the deduction of article 24 costs where the house is let |
| Someone who has filed nothing for years | Regularising the unexpired years with the article 27 surcharge before the enquiry letter arrives |
| Someone about to sell | The 3 % the buyer withholds and the Modelo 210 on the gain within three months |
| Retired person who has moved here for good | Ceasing to be non-resident: worldwide income tax, the treaty and Modelo 720 where it applies |
Working with Murcia, remotely
With a power of attorney and without paper. You need neither a Spanish digital certificate nor a trip to Spain: you give us authority to file and to receive notifications, and from then on the alert reaches us before it reaches the letterbox at home, which is where these things usually go missing.
We work in English as a matter of course. What we do ask is that you tell us about the whole portfolio at once — all three houses, not one — because carrying them together costs less and because the errors are usually sitting precisely in the one that went unmentioned.
We also say plainly what we cannot do. We cannot promise that an enquiry will be dropped or that a claim for a refund will succeed, and we do not advise on the tax law of the country you live in. If your case needs that, you name your adviser there and we coordinate with them, so that neither side assumes the other one was dealing with it.
A British couple at a Murcia resort who never filed anything
They bought a house at an inland resort in 2019, use it a few weeks a year and do not let it. They believed that with no letting there was nothing to declare. In October 2026 they decide to get up to date before selling. Cadastral value: 95,000 €, at 2 % because in the example the municipality has not revised its values within the period that gives the right to 1.1 %. Imputed income for the house: 1,900 € a year, 950 € per owner, at 24 % since the United Kingdom left the Union: 228 € per head per year.
| Tax year | Deadline it had | Position in October 2026 | Surcharge per owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | By 31-12-2021 | Time-barred | — |
| 2021 | By 31-12-2022 | Time-barred on 31-12-2026: still owed | 15 % = 34.20 € + interest |
| 2022 | By 31-12-2023 | More than 12 months late | 15 % = 34.20 € + interest |
| 2023 | By 31-12-2024 | More than 12 months late | 15 % = 34.20 € + interest |
| 2024 | By 31-12-2025 | Nine full months | 10 % = 22.80 € |
| 2025 | By 31-12-2026 | Within the deadline | 0 € |
Per owner: 1,140 € of tax and 125.40 € of surcharges plus interest. Late-payment interest is worked out on filing, from the point each year reaches twelve months until the day of payment. For the two of them, double: ten Modelos 210 in a single engagement. It is money, but little compared with what it costs for the matter to surface at the sale, with the buyer withholding 3 % and the tax authority cross-checking the blank years. If this is your case, the form is the one for voluntary regularisation, and how the four years are counted is in the four-year limitation period.
Why the order matters in a Murcian regularisation
The 2021 year in the example is the delicate one: it has weeks left before it is time-barred, and until it is, it can be regularised with a surcharge. If before it is filed the tax authority notifies any action concerning it, the framework changes: there is no longer a 15 % surcharge but an assessment with a possible penalty, and that risk reaches every year still open. That is why the five years are prepared together and filed in the same week, starting with the oldest, and the decision is taken with the client knowing what each option costs. The detail is in the order for regularising several years.
What almost nobody on the Murcian coast asks is where the tax authority sends its notices. If the only address on file is the house at the resort, the letter arrives there in February, nobody is in, delivery is attempted twice and it is then published in the official gazette. From that moment it counts as notified and deadlines run, even if you are in Leeds knowing nothing about it. An assessment that could have been appealed becomes final because you never saw it. That is why the first thing we do is give you an address for notifications that is actually read — ours — under a power of representation.