Putting the property on the register
The property is declared to the Consejería de Turismo of the Junta de Andalucía, the regional government, by responsible declaration (declaración responsable), and the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía issues a code which here reads VUT/GR/00000. It must appear in your listings. The Supreme Court judgment 620/2026 struck down the single state register and left this one standing.
In the protected quarters of the city there is a second question the register does not answer: what the municipal plan permits at that address, and whether heritage protection attaches to the building. Those are planning matters, decided locally, and they are checked address by address.
Tourists in spring, students from October
A flat let to tourists for six months and to a student from October is running two different tax regimes in one year. The tourist period follows the holiday-let rules; the academic-year let follows the rules for ordinary residential leases, with their own treatment of costs and reductions. They are computed separately, the costs are apportioned to the period each one occupies, and the days under neither produce imputed income for a non-resident owner. Mixing them into a single figure is the most common error we correct on Granada files.
Resident, self-employed or non-resident
| Your position | What you file |
|---|---|
| Resident in Spain | Both kinds of rental income inside your income tax return, each on its own basis |
| Self-employed for this activity | Modelo 130 and Modelo 303 quarterly, Modelo 390 in January |
| Non-resident | Modelo 210 per property and per owner, with imputed income for the days at your disposal |
Non-resident rates are 19 % with deductible costs for residents of the European Union, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, and 24 % on gross rent with no deductions for everyone else. Granada's ownership is more local than the coast's, so most of these files run through the personal income tax return, where the reductions available on residential letting are worth understanding before choosing between the two markets.
VAT: an exemption with edges, and a 10 % without a date
Furnished homes let to the same tenant for 30 nights or fewer were to carry VAT at 10 % under Royal Decree-law 26/2026 of 29 September, which Congress voted down on 2 October 2026. A reception, daily cleaning or breakfast therefore still changes the rate for those stays: 10 % with them, exempt without. Longer lets are exempt on the same condition, which matters in a university city where many flats go to students for the academic year.
Letting individual rooms in a shared flat raises its own questions, and will raise new ones when the short-stay rule returns (by July 2028 at the latest, under Directive (EU) 2025/516); it should be looked at rather than assumed. Whatever the format, the reverse charge on platform commissions carries on: Airbnb from Ireland, Booking from the Netherlands, self-accounted through the ROI register and Modelo 349.
A year-round city with two peaks
The Alhambra sells tickets every month of the year, the ski season adds winter weekends, and the university fills the city from October to June. Granada therefore has a flatter occupancy curve than most Andalusian destinations, punctuated by Easter and by long weekends. Because deductible costs are apportioned by nights actually let, a flat calendar is a good calendar: it lifts the share of community fees, IBI, insurance, waste charge, supplies, mortgage interest and building depreciation that reaches the return.
August is the exception, when the heat empties the city, and that is precisely the month that a student let would cover. Choosing between the two markets is as much a tax decision as a commercial one.
Communities in historic buildings
Since 2025 a community of owners can limit or condition tourist letting with three fifths of the votes and quotas. Buildings in the older quarters are small, the neighbours know each other, and the threshold is reachable, so the community position is worth checking before a purchase rather than after. Where the property is an independent house, the issue does not arise at all.
Municipal charges and works
Waste tariffs and the planning treatment of tourist properties are municipal and vary; we read the ordinance applying to your address. On building work, the distinction between a repair, deducted in the year it is paid, and an improvement, recovered through depreciation and added to the acquisition value on a later sale, matters a great deal in a city where letting projects usually begin with a refurbishment. The invoices need to say which is which.
When letting becomes a business
There is a threshold in Spanish income tax at which letting property stops being investment income and becomes an economic activity, with different rules on costs, on social security and on the returns you file. Historically that turned on employing someone full time for the activity. It matters in Granada because owners who accumulate three or four flats, hire a person to run the changeovers and effectively operate a small letting business often cross it without noticing, and the consequences reach beyond income tax into the self-employed regime. The answer depends on the facts rather than on the number of properties, so it is worth asking the question explicitly once the portfolio grows, instead of assuming the treatment that applied to the first flat still applies to the fourth.
How we run the file
We handle the recurring compliance and, above all, the split of a mixed year between tourist letting, residential letting and personal availability, with the costs apportioned accordingly. Drafts shown to you, filings on time, from 60 € a month plus VAT, and no tie-in. Pricing · Tell us about your case.
A one-bedroom flat below the Alhambra, turned over 111 times
Javier lives in the Zaidín district and works at the university. His one-bedroom flat near Plaza Nueva was occupied for 245 nights in 2026, across about 111 stays, at an average of 105 € a night: 25,725 € of income. Visitors arrive with their Alhambra ticket already booked, stay two nights and move on to Córdoba or Seville. Where a beach flat has ten cleans a year, a flat in the Albaicín or the Realejo can have more than a hundred, and costs that exist only because of a guest are deducted whole, with no split by nights. That weighs far more here than elsewhere.
| Item | Calculation | Deductible |
|---|---|---|
| Platform commissions | 15 % of income | 3,858.75 € |
| Cleaning between stays | 111 × 38 € | 4,218.00 € |
| Laundry of sheets and towels | 111 × 12 € | 1,332.00 € |
| IBI, community, insurance, supplies and fibre (3,910 €), building depreciation at 3 % of 120,000 € (3,600 €) and furniture at 10 % of 9,000 € (900 €) | 8,410 € × 245/365 | 5,645.07 € |
| Total deductible | 15,053.82 € |
Net rental income: 25,725 − 15,053.82 = 10,671.18 €. The 120 guest-free days add imputed income on a cadastral value of 80,000 € at 2 %: 80,000 × 2 % × 120/365 = 526.03 €. Both figures join Javier's other income in his return. Note that almost 9,400 € of cost (commissions, cleaning and laundry) went in whole: at this turnover, filing every invoice from the cleaning firm is worth more than anything else.
Many Granada landlords let to students for years and applied the reduction in article 23.2 of the Income Tax Act for home leases (today 50 % as a general rule on new contracts). When the flat turns tourist, the tax software still offers the box and some owners tick it. The reduction does not apply to tourist letting. For Javier, ticking it would hide 5,335.59 € of base; at a 37 % marginal rate that is 1,974.17 € of tax a year, plus interest and a possible penalty when the review comes.
A ski flat in Pradollano is another town hall's business
Many local families also own a flat at the Sierra Nevada resort. Pradollano lies in the municipality of Monachil, so its planning rules and bylaws are Monachil's, not Granada's, even though the tourism code still starts VUT/GR. For tax, the ski flat is the mirror of the Albaicín flat: a few weeks of season, long closed months, communities with heavy heating and maintenance costs. Letting both means keeping each property's own nights, costs and imputed income; the days of one are never added to the other.
A hundred guest reports and the VAT register
Beyond the tax office, every guest's details go to the police through the Interior Ministry's application; with this turnover, that is over a hundred reports a year. Not a tax matter, but that log of arrivals and departures is also the best proof of the nights let if they are ever questioned. And exempt or taxed, the Spanish VAT on Airbnb's and Booking's commissions is yours to self-account: entry in the EU operators register on Modelo 036 (the 037 no longer exists) and a Modelo 349. With more than a hundred stays a year, the volume of commissions is large enough for an oversight to stand out; see registering for the ROI and VIES.