The register, first of all
A responsible declaration to the Consejería de Turismo of the Junta de Andalucía, the regional government, brings the property onto the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía and produces a code in the VUT/GR/00000 format, since Almuñécar belongs to the province of Granada. The code goes in every advertisement. Supreme Court judgment 620/2026 annulled the state-wide single register without affecting the Andalusian one.
The return follows the owner
| Your position | What you file |
|---|---|
| Resident in Spain | Net rental profit inside your income tax return |
| Self-employed for this activity | Modelo 130 and 303 quarterly, Modelo 390 in January |
| Non-resident | Modelo 210 per property and per owner, plus imputed income for days at your disposal |
Non-residents pay 19 % with deductible costs if they live in the European Union, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein, and 24 % on the gross with nothing deductible otherwise. A large share of owners here, though, are Spanish residents from Granada, Jaén or Madrid who bought a second home decades ago and let it in summer. For them the rental result simply joins the rest of their income, and the questions are about apportionment and about proof.
VAT: exempt on short and long stays alike, for the time being
Royal Decree-law 26/2026, published on 30 September 2026, applied VAT at 10 % to furnished homes let for stays of up to 30 nights and left longer lets exempt under Article 20.Uno.23 of the VAT Act, along with the home in which the owner habitually lives. Congress rejected it two days later, so a let without hotel services is exempt whether it lasts a week in August or a whole winter.
Many owners here let through word of mouth and local agencies rather than platforms. When the 10 % returns (the EU deadline is July 2028) it will apply all the same: it follows the stay, not the channel. What may differ is the reverse charge — if you pay no commission to Airbnb or Booking, there may be no ROI registration or Modelo 349 to deal with — but the agency's own invoice needs looking at before concluding that, and its VAT stays a cost until your own letting is taxed.
Ten weeks that have to carry the year
The season is short and sharp: July and August above all, Easter, and long weekends in spring. An honest annual occupancy here is often between 60 and 100 nights. Since deductible costs are apportioned by nights actually let, that means only a fifth or a quarter of the community fees, IBI, insurance, waste charge, supplies, mortgage interest and building depreciation makes it into the return, and the rest is simply lost.
Two practical consequences follow. First, anything that adds nights outside the peak — winter lets to retirees, spring weekends, October sun — improves the tax result across every cost line at once, not just the line it relates to. Second, for a non-resident, the nine or ten idle months generate imputed income on the cadastral value, so the empty period is not tax-neutral even though it earns nothing.
Family ownership, and what it does to the forms
Coastal flats bought in the 1980s in this part of Andalusia have frequently been inherited, and are now owned by three or four siblings in undivided shares, sometimes with a surviving parent holding a life interest. Spanish tax follows the deed: each co-owner declares their share of the income and their share of the costs, and where a life interest exists the income is attributed to the person entitled to it rather than to the bare owners. One return covering the whole flat, filed by whoever collects the money, is wrong even when everyone agrees it is fair. Sorting out the title before the letting season is easier than explaining it afterwards.
Communities, and the municipal bills
Since 2025 a community of owners can limit or condition tourist letting with three fifths of the votes and quotas. Buildings here are often a mix of summer flats and year-round homes, and meetings tend to happen out of season. Delegating your vote matters if you cannot attend. Statutes and recent minutes are worth reading before you commit money.
Waste tariffs and the planning treatment of tourist properties are set by the town hall, vary between municipalities and change over time. We read the ordinance applying to your address rather than assuming it matches the next town along the coast.
Paying someone to clean and turn the flat around
Almost every owner here pays somebody locally for changeovers, and how that is done decides whether the cost is deductible. A self-employed cleaner who issues an invoice with their tax number is a cost you can prove, and it goes into the return apportioned by the nights let. Cash paid without a receipt is a cost you cannot prove, and for tax purposes it did not happen. If instead you engage someone regularly on your own account, under your instructions and on your schedule, you may be closer to employing them than to buying a service, which brings social security and withholding obligations that are far more expensive to regularise than to set up. The safe route for a small operation is to buy the service from someone who invoices, and to keep the invoices.
What we take on for you
We run the recurring compliance for owners on the Costa Tropical: co-ownership sorted out, costs apportioned honestly against a short season, imputed income kept right for the long closed period, and returns filed on time with the draft shown to you first. From 60 € a month plus VAT, and no tie-in. Pricing · Tell us about the property.
The Ortega family's flat: 64 nights, 25 days of their own, and the rest shut
The Ortegas live in Jaén and file their income tax there. Since the 1990s they have owned a flat in a 1970s block with a pool on the Costa Tropical. In 2026 they let it for 58 summer nights at 110 € and six nights over Easter at 90 €: 64 nights and 6,920 € of income. The family spent 25 days there between June and September, and the flat was closed for the rest of the year. Each of those three lives is taxed differently.
| Days of the year | What they are | Costs deductible | Imputed income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 64 | Let to tourists | Yes, proportionally | No |
| 25 | Family use | No | Yes |
| 276 | Closed | No | Yes |
Commission at 15 % (1,038 €) and thirteen cleans at 40 € (520 €) go in whole: 1,558 €. The fixed bills are IBI 430 €, community 900 € (the pool and the porter show), insurance 220 €, supplies 900 € and depreciation of 1,800 €, being 3 % of 60,000 € of building value: 4,250 € in all, of which only the 64 nights count, 4,250 × 64/365 = 745.21 €. Net rental income: 6,920 − 1,558 − 745.21 = 4,616.79 €.
Then the 301 other days. For a Spanish resident, family days and closed days are the same thing: both generate imputed income. With a cadastral value of 70,000 € at 2 %, 70,000 × 2 % × 301/365 = 1,154.52 €. Owned half each by husband and wife, the flat adds half of 5,771.31 €, or 2,885.66 €, to each spouse's tax base. The surprise is usually that a fifth of what they declare on the flat comes from no guest at all, simply from owning it.
The community and IBI receipts arrive in full, and because «the flat is let» the urge is to subtract them in full. With 64 nights let, only 64 parts in 365 are deductible. For the Ortegas, deducting everything would understate the base by roughly 3,500 € every year, and it is the first thing a review examines, because the tax office learns the number of nights from the platforms.
A Norwegian couple from January to March
The Costa Tropical winter has its own clientele: northern European couples renting for three months to escape the cold. A stay like that, under a contract for a season and with no services while it lasts, is normally a seasonal lease rather than a tourist let. It remains property income, but it changes the apportionment: those ninety days become let days. With 154 let days instead of 64, the deductible share of the Ortegas' fixed bills would climb from 745.21 € to 1,793.15 €.
Cousins for a week, a brother in Germany, and one form for the VAT register
Lending the flat to relatives or friends is common here. Those weeks are not a letting: no income, no costs, and they count as days at your disposal. What does not work is charging «something symbolic» without declaring it; once there is a price, there is a letting. A calendar noting who occupied the flat each week, paying or not, saves arguments with the tax office and within the family.
Where one of the names on the deed lives abroad, that person does not use the Spanish income tax return at all but Modelo 210 for their share. The 2026 rent goes on a single annual form filed between 1 and 20 April 2027 (by the 15th if paying by direct debit), and the imputed income for the unlet days between April and December 2027. And although the Ortegas are not a business for income tax, for VAT anyone who lets is, which is why the entry in the EU operators register needed for platform commissions is requested on Modelo 036, the same form any company uses. The simplified 037 was abolished in February 2025. It is done once.