VAT on short lets is coming, date unknown: how to prepare without losing money

What the decree-law said, and what applies today

Today, letting a dwelling to holidaymakers without services proper to the hotel trade is exempt from Spanish VAT under article 20.Uno.23 of the VAT Act, and with those services it is taxed at 10 %. Article 7 of Royal Decree-law 26/2026 would have taken out of that exemption the letting of furnished homes when the let to the same tenant does not exceed 30 nights, taxing it at the reduced rate of 10 % — the rate hotels charge — from 1 December 2026. Lets of more than 30 nights without hotel services stayed exempt, and so did the home in which the landlord habitually lives. The decree-law also set 10 % VAT for renovation and repair work on homes let as a tenant's main residence, paid by bank means, which was aimed at long-term letting.

The text was published in the BOE, Spain's official gazette, on 30 September 2026 (no. 241), and two days later Congress refused to ratify it, by 178 votes to 172, so it lapsed without touching a single stay. What remains is the European calendar: Directive (EU) 2025/516 treats short lets like hotel accommodation with July 2028 as the outer limit, so the measure is expected back on a date nobody can give today.

What will change, before and after

	Today	Once the 10 % applies (stays of up to 30 nights)
VAT on the rent	Exempt	10 %
VAT on your costs	Not recoverable	Recoverable, with the ordinary rules and apportionments
Quarterly returns	Only for platform commission	Form 303 every quarter with the rent in it, starting with the quarter in which the rule takes effect
Registers	Light	Invoices issued, invoices received, capital assets
Invoicing	Not required per stay	Per stay, with the VAT stated
The price question	Does not arise	Raise the price, or absorb the tax

Your residence is irrelevant. VAT attaches to where the property is, so a non-resident owner filing form 210 for income tax will be caught exactly as a resident is. The price decision is worked through with real figures in Lucía's case further down this page.

Four things worth doing while the date is open

1. Deal with the VAT you already owe, and have the registration ready. Airbnb and Booking invoice from other member states, and with the rent still exempt that already requires entry on the ROI, the EU VAT register, form 349 and a 303 for the reverse charge. Registering the rent itself will be a form 036 modification declaring taxable supplies, filed once the start date is known. The mechanics are in registering a holiday let with the tax office and joining the EU VAT register.
2. Settle your price and have the 10 % invoice ready. Work out the rate now, so that changing it on each platform and issuing an invoice per stay with the VAT shown takes a day. Bookings already paid for stays after the start date will have to be looked at one by one when the new rule is published, so keep a list with the payment date of each.
3. Get a full invoice for every cost, in your name, with your NIE or NIF. Cleaning, utilities, commission, replacement furniture and linen: once the rent is taxed each invoice will be worth its VAT, but only if it exists. A till receipt or an invoice made out to the management company does not count, and neither can be asked for two years later.
4. Keep the booking register current. Arrival and departure dates, nights, amounts and platform, per property. It will feed the 303, it supports any apportionment if you also let for more than 30 nights or use the flat yourself, and it is the first document asked for in a review.

Three shortcuts that go badly

• Charging VAT early, or forgetting it when it comes. A short stay without hotel services is exempt today, and VAT added "just in case" has to be paid over with no right to deduct. Once the rule is in force the opposite mistake costs more: the tax is due all the same, and if you did not add it, it comes out of what you collected, with a surcharge or a penalty depending on who finds it first. Correcting invoices for guests who have gone home is, in practice, impossible.
• Relabelling short stays as seasonal lets. Stays of more than 30 nights will remain exempt, but a seasonal contract has to answer a genuine temporary need. Signing "months" that are really tourist weeks does not change the rate; it changes the risk. The honest comparison is in tourist or seasonal letting.
• Incorporating in a hurry. A company does not make a letting exempt or taxable; what is supplied decides that, and under the coming rule the length of the stays, not who supplies it. What a company does create is running costs, corporate filings and an expensive exit, for reasons set out in buying personally or through a company.

Adding hotel services "to move to 10 %" ahead of time only works if you really provide them: today they are the one thing that takes a short stay out of the exemption, and they will stop mattering for the rate the day short stays carry 10 % regardless. If you add services, do it for the business, as explained in exempt or with hotel services.

What is still pending

What governs today is the VAT Act as it stood before the decree: exempt without hotel services, 10 % with them. What article 7 would have fixed (10 % on lets of up to 30 nights from 1 December 2026, with the exemption kept for longer stays without hotel services and for the landlord's own habitual residence) is no longer law. What is pending is the date on which something like it returns, with July 2028 as the limit, and points such as bookings paid before and enjoyed after the start date will depend on the new wording; this page is updated as they are clarified. The current position is in the guide to the 10 % VAT on holiday lets and on our holiday let tax page.

For clients, the VAT regime is a setting on the file: it is ready to be switched on the day the rule takes effect, and the drafts will calculate at 10 % from that date. Meanwhile we keep filing what is already compulsory, the 303 for the commission reverse charge and form 349. That is the whole point of arriving prepared — the first 303 with rent in it should be a routine filing, not an emergency.

Three ways of reacting to a VAT with no start date yet

Faced with a tax that was announced, voted down and is due back, owners take one of three attitudes, usually without noticing. Forgetting about it until it reappears in the BOE looks prudent, but the September decree left two months between publication and effect, and nothing says the next text will leave more; whoever reaches that day without an EU VAT number, invoices in their own name or a price decision has to do everything at once, on top of what the commissions already require. Preparing in order means filing what is compulsory today (ROI, Modelo 349 and the 303 for the Airbnb and Booking commissions), keeping cost invoices in your own name and having the price decided: a few hours. Looking for a shortcut — dressing tourist stays up as seasonal lets, declaring hotel services nobody provides, forming a company «for the VAT» — is the most talked about and the most troublesome. In our reading the second wins in almost every case.

Lucía's price on the day the 10 % starts

Lucía has a tourist flat in Torremolinos, let about 150 nights a year at an average of 120 €: 18,000 €, exempt today because she provides no hotel services. Her annual costs carrying 21 % VAT (utilities, maintenance, small replacements, bookkeeping) are 4,840 €, of which 840 € is VAT: a plain cost while she is exempt, deductible once the rent is taxed provided the invoices are in her name. Platform commission is left out, because its VAT is already self-assessed under the reverse charge and, once the letting is taxed, will be deducted on the same return. The real decision will be about price, not tax, and the table shows a full year with the VAT in force.

With 10 % in force, a full year	Price per night	Nights	Lucía's base	Input VAT recovered	Yearly change against the exempt years
Price up 10 %, same occupancy	132 €	150	18,000 €	840 €	+840 €
Price up 10 %, 10 % of nights lost	132 €	135	16,200 €	840 €	−960 €
Price held at 120 €	120 €	150	16,364 €	840 €	−796 €
Price raised to 126 €	126 €	150	17,182 €	840 €	+22 €

Holding the price, each 120 € night would contain 109.09 € for her, so 150 nights give 16,364 € and 1,636 € goes to the tax office; with the 840 € recovered she would be about 796 € a year worse off. At 126 €, the base is 114.55 € a night, 17,182 € a year and 1,718 € of VAT: the 818 € she stops receiving is covered by the 840 € recovered, roughly break-even, provided a 5 % rise loses no bookings. The range runs from gaining 840 € to losing just under 1,000 € a year, and what decides where Lucía lands is not the law but how much her market will bear.

The small print on the winning row

First, the shop window: platforms show the guest a final price. Nearly every holiday flat nearby will bear the same 10 %, but not every owner will pass it on in the same way or at the same time, and the rejected decree left out an owner letting their own main residence — irrelevant in August, decisive in November. Second, the workload: being taxable will mean filing Modelo 303 every quarter with the rent included, registers of invoices issued and received, and an invoice per stay; if you already file a 303 for the platform commission, as the law requires today, the jump is smaller. Third, apportionment: input VAT is recoverable only to the extent costs serve the taxable activity, so a few months of lets over 30 nights, which will stay exempt, or August with the family, reduce it. Lucía's 840 € is the ceiling, not a certainty. One census detail for when you update your registration: Modelo 037 was abolished on 3 February 2025 and everything now goes through Modelo 036.

When there is little to decide

If you are selling in the next few months, the 10 % may never reach you, but the commission returns are due until the day of the sale all the same: keep them current and prepare for the sale. If you are already thinking of switching to seasonal or long lets for other reasons, the question is a different one, set out in tourist or seasonal letting. And the second habit that pays in every scenario, after the invoice folder, is knowing your elasticity: how many bookings you lose when you add ten euros to the price. Almost nobody has measured it, and your own history of prices and occupancy answers it better than any forecast.