Selling as a non-resident

The three numbers in play

The 3 % withholding. The buyer must retain three per cent of the price and pay it to the tax authority within a month of the deed, using form 211. It is a payment on account of your gain, not the tax itself. It leaves your hands on completion day whatever your actual position is.

The tax on the gain. 19 % of the difference between the acquisition value and the transfer value, each properly built up with the costs and taxes of the respective operation. Filed within three months of the end of the buyer's month, and that is where the 3 % is set against what is really owed.

The municipal land tax. Payable to the town hall on the increase in urban land value. Two methods of calculation exist and you are entitled to the lower of them; where there has been no increase in land value, there is nothing to pay, but that must be claimed and evidenced.

The procedural sequence is set out step by step in declaring the sale of your Spanish property. This page is about the decisions around it.

Decision one: fix the open years before completion, or after

	Regularise first	Sell and deal with it later
Cost of the missing years	Surcharge: 1 % plus 1 % per complete month, 15 % plus interest past a year	If a letter arrives first, penalties instead of surcharges
The refund of the excess 3 %	Processed against a clean file	A refund claim is exactly what prompts a look at the file
Timing	Weeks, in parallel with the marketing of the property	Months, after you have left the country and the folder is in storage
Negotiating position	Unaffected	A problem discovered during conveyancing is a problem discovered by the buyer's lawyer

We have never seen a case where leaving it until afterwards was cheaper. The route is in catching up on unfiled Modelo 210, and the reason it matters at this particular moment is that a sale is the event most likely to put your file in front of a human being.

Decision two: who bears the municipal land tax

By law the seller bears it in an ordinary sale, and in practice it is negotiated, retained at the notary or paid over by the buyer's lawyer on your behalf. Three things are worth agreeing in writing before completion: who pays it, who files it, and what happens if the calculation is later shown to be wrong. A retention held by a third party with nobody responsible for filing is how sellers end up chasing a figure from another country two years later.

Decision three: what to do about the improvement invoices

Decision four: timing, and what it does and does not change

Completing in December rather than January changes which year the gain falls into, which matters if you have other Spanish income in one of them, or if your own country taxes the same gain on a different cycle and relief depends on matching them up. It also changes the split between rental income and imputed income for the property's final year.

What timing does not do is reduce the Spanish rate on the gain, which is flat. Be careful of advice that implies otherwise; the real timing questions in a cross-border sale are usually about the other country, and they need somebody who files there.

Decision five: what to agree with the buyer in writing

• That a stamped copy of form 211 will be handed to you, or to your representative, once filed. Without it you are claiming credit for a payment you cannot evidence.
• Who files and pays the municipal land tax, and out of which retention.
• What happens to any retention held for utilities or community charges, and by when it is released.
• An address and a contact for you that will still work in six months, because that is when the questions arrive.

None of that is contentious. All of it is much easier to agree while the buyer still needs something from you than afterwards.

What tips the balance on your Spanish property

How early you start. Everything expensive about a non-resident sale is fixed in advance: the invoices exist or they do not, the years are filed or they are not, the residence certificate is current or it lapsed, the 211 is in the completion checklist or it is forgotten. By the time you are at the notary, the outcome is already determined and all that remains is arithmetic.

The second factor is whether you will still be reachable. Sellers leave. Spanish refunds arrive months later into accounts that get closed, notifications go to addresses nobody lives at, and a representation at the tax office that was never granted cannot be granted from three thousand kilometres away with no certificate. Sort out how you will be contacted and paid before you hand over the keys, not after.

The capital gains filing is quoted as a one-off job — the range is on the pricing page — and any catch-up for earlier years is quoted separately once we know how many there are. If a sale is in prospect, the useful first message is the expected completion date and what you own; send it through the contact form.

Margaret's sale in Fuengirola, worked through

Margaret lives in Bristol and is selling the Fuengirola apartment she bought in 2012 for 180,000 €, plus 16,000 € of taxes, notary and registry. In 2016 she refurbished it for 25,000 €: kitchen, bathrooms, windows. She never let it; she used it for holidays and lent it to family. A buyer offers 320,000 € and wants to complete in two months.

Transfer value. 320,000 € less the agency's 3 % commission plus VAT (11,616 €) and the municipal land value tax she pays, assumed at 4,000 €: 304,384 €. Acquisition value. 180,000 € plus 16,000 € of purchase costs plus the 25,000 € refurbishment, which is an improvement rather than a repair. Never let, so no depreciation to subtract: 221,000 €. Gain and tax. 304,384 − 221,000 = 83,384 €; at 19 %, 15,843 €. The buyer will have withheld 9,600 €, so with her Modelo 210 Margaret pays the difference: 6,243 €.

Without the refurbishment invoices the work does not exist for the tax authority: acquisition value drops to 196,000 €, the gain rises to 108,384 € and the tax to 20,593 €. That is 4,750 € more for a lost folder.

The imputed income she never filed

Margaret never filed imputed income for the years the flat was at her disposal. With a revised rateable value of 90,000 €, that is 990 € of income a year; as a UK resident she is taxed at 24 %, about 238 € a year, and four years not yet time-barred add up to about 950 € of tax. Filed now, of her own accord, it carries the voluntary surcharge; found after the sale, it carries a penalty starting at 50 % of the tax, reduced if accepted and paid on time.

Margaret's sale	Invoices kept, years up to date	No refurbishment invoices	No invoices, and the open years surface later
Gain	83,384 €	108,384 €	108,384 €
Tax at 19 %	15,843 €	20,593 €	20,593 €
3 % already withheld	9,600 €	9,600 €	9,600 €
Payable with Modelo 210	6,243 €	10,993 €	10,993 €
Imputed income arrears	Filed first, about 950 € plus surcharge	Filed first, about 950 € plus surcharge	950 € plus penalty and interest
Approximate total tax cost	About 16,950 €	About 21,700 €	Over 22,000 €, and an open file

The gaps are not enormous in tax, but the third column carries something the euros do not show: handling from Bristol, months after emptying the flat, a procedure that would have taken an afternoon beforehand.

If the flat was your main home

Some exemptions designed for a main residence apply to non-residents only in very specific conditions, and others not at all. If you lived in the flat as a Spanish resident and left recently, or plan to reinvest, your position differs from Margaret's and needs analysing before the completion date is fixed; the comparison is in selling as a resident or a non-resident.

Do not hold up the sale to tidy the past

Some sellers delay to «sort everything out first» and lose the buyer. Catching up four years of imputed income takes weeks and can run in parallel with marketing the flat. What must be in hand before signing is the folder: purchase deed, improvement invoices, IBI receipts, a valid NIE and a residence certificate. Whatever is missing that day cannot be rebuilt later. To have your own figures worked out, use the property sale form.