Term time and summer are not taxed alike
The academic-year contract is a residential letting, and where the tenant makes the flat their home the net income enjoys the reduction that the Spanish personal income tax act provides for residential letting. Letting by the night in summer gives no right to that reduction, because it meets nobody's permanent need for a home.
So the flat has to be run as two blocks inside the same annual return: term-time income with its reduction, summer income without it, and the costs split between the two. This is not a subtlety. The reduction moves the result a great deal, and applying it to the whole is exactly what gets corrected afterwards. The two products are compared in holiday letting or seasonal letting.
Letting room by room to several students on separate contracts is very common here, and the Dirección General de Tributos, the Spanish tax authority's ruling body, has been refusing the residential-letting reduction in cases of letting by the room. It is a contested point, with readings in both directions: we apply it where your case supports it, having told you first that the criterion is not settled.
Apportioning costs, day by day
The costs of the property are deducted in proportion to the time it spent producing income and according to the period each cost belongs to. IBI, which is the annual local property tax, the community fees, the insurance and the depreciation are split by days between the term-time period, the summer period and the empty days, which are not deductible and which additionally generate imputed property income.
In a student flat there is also a practical boundary: repair against improvement. Painting, replacing a broken boiler or fixing a shutter is conservation, deducted in the year it is paid. Changing the layout, enclosing a terrace or installing air conditioning where there was none is an improvement, which is not deducted as an expense and comes back through depreciation and on the day of sale. The years when tenants rotate are where the two get mixed up most; the test is set out in improvement or repair.
Keeping the two blocks apart is also what makes the summer quarters manageable. The academic-year contract gives you dates and a rent; the summer gives you a booking calendar and the platform's statements. Set side by side, those two cover the whole year, and the empty days fall out by subtraction, which is exactly the figure the imputation needs.
VAT in the summer
Here the two halves of the year were about to part company, and for now they do not. The academic-year let to students is exempt under article 20.Uno.23 of the Spanish VAT Act as long as no hotel services are supplied, and so are the July nights on the same condition. Article 7 of Royal Decree-law 26/2026 put lets of no more than 30 nights to the same tenant at 10 %, but Congress voted the decree down on 2 October 2026: there is no date now, only the July 2028 limit in Directive (EU) 2025/516.
When that day comes it will be one flat, two treatments, and the VAT on shared costs — community fees, utilities, repairs — deducted only in the proportion that belongs to the taxed summer. If there is cleaning during the stay, a reception desk or a change of linen, VAT applies already and the classification also changes for income tax: it stops being income from immovable capital and becomes a business activity.
What has to be examined is the calendar and the list of services, not the wording of the listing. We develop it in holiday lets.
Who writes to us from Salamanca
| Who | What they need to resolve |
|---|---|
| Owner of a flat let by the academic year and in summer | Separating the two blocks and applying the reduction only where it fits |
| Somebody letting rooms to three or four students | Whether the residential reduction is defensible in their case |
| A family with two or three inherited flats in the centre | Depreciation, acquisition value and who declares which share |
| A lecturer or researcher arriving from abroad | Tax residence in the first year and whether the inbound regime fits |
| An owner living in another province | Running the flat at a distance and the summer quarters |
Our way of working in Salamanca
On the academic calendar, which is the one that really governs here. The sensible moment to put a flat in order is September, when the year's contract is signed, and not May, when nothing about what has already happened can be changed.
Everything remotely: you send us the contracts and the costs once, we build the split, and from then on it only needs updating. If some year you want to try a different letting formula, we look at it before you sign, which is while it can still make a difference. On the point that is genuinely contested here — the reduction on letting by the room — we will give you our view and the risk it carries in writing, and we will not tell you the answer is safe.
A student flat in Salamanca, academic year plus summer, in figures
A flat next to the Plaza de Anaya is let from October to June to a student for 1,050 € a month, on an academic-year contract, and in July it is let by the night: thirty nights at 120 €. The day left over in July, plus August and September, it stands empty. Fixed costs for the year add up to 2,400 €, and depreciation, at 3 % on 80,000 € of building value, another 2,400 €.
| Block | Days | Income | Costs allocated | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academic year (October–June) | 273 | 9,450 € | 3,590 € | 5,860 €, which with the 50 % reduction counts as 2,930 € |
| Summer by the night (July) | 30 | 3,600 € | 395 € + 540 € of commission + 200 € of cleaning | 2,465 €, no reduction |
| Empty (rest of July, August and September) | 62 | — | 815 € that cannot be deducted | Imputed income: 131 € |
| Total in the income tax return | 5,526 € |
The 50 % reduction is the general one for residential leases signed from 26 May 2023, and it only applies if the academic-year contract qualifies as a lease of a home, which is the first thing we read. The imputed income — the notional income Spain taxes on property that is neither let nor a main home — is calculated at 1.1 % on 70,000 € of valor catastral, subject to checking the rate that applies in the municipality. Had the reduction been applied to both blocks, the base would have been 4,294 €: 1,232 € less, the kind of error that gets corrected with interest. The day-by-day split is explained in apportioning by days let.
The Salamanca academic year also sets the tax calendar
| When | What is worth doing |
|---|---|
| September, when the academic-year contract is signed | Check its wording: the reduction for the whole following year depends on it |
| July, before opening the nights | Separate the summer's income and costs from day one |
| The quarter after the platform commissions | Modelo 349 and self-assessment of the commission, if it is charged by a company in another EU member state |
| April to the end of June | Income tax return with the three blocks kept separate |
Costs that serve only one block go wholly to that block: the deep clean between the student leaving and the first July booking, the summer bed linen or the platform commission belong to the nightly period, and the boiler repair the tenant reported in February belongs to the academic year. Only the shared costs of the year are split by days.
Lecturers and researchers joining from abroad ask about the flat and hardly ever about their own income tax. If they have not been resident in Spain in the previous five years, they can opt for the special regime for impatriates, but the election is made on Modelo 149 within six months of registering with Social Security, and that deadline does not reopen. Someone who arrives in September and finds out during the income tax campaign has already lost it. We explain it in the deadline and paperwork for Modelo 149, and it is requested through the impatriate regime form.