The register, and what it does not do
A responsible declaration to the Consejería de Turismo of the Junta de Andalucía, the regional government, puts the property on the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía and produces a code in the form VUT/MA/00000. That code belongs in every advertisement. Supreme Court judgment 620/2026 struck down the national single register without touching the Andalusian one.
What the code does not do is settle the private-law question. A tourism code is permission from the regional government; it is not permission from your community of owners, and it is not a planning consent. Owners frequently treat the code as the end of the process when it is only the first of three doors.
Where the three-fifths vote actually bites
Since 2025 a community of owners can limit or condition tourist letting with three fifths of the votes and quotas. That majority is far easier to assemble in a building where almost everyone lives there all year than in a coastal block owned from abroad. Rincón is exactly the first kind of town. Before buying with letting in mind, read the statutes and the minutes of the last general meetings, and ask whether the point has already been raised.
Which forms are yours
| 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 each quarter, Modelo 390 in January |
| Non-resident | Modelo 210 per property and per owner, with imputed income for the days it was available to you |
For a non-resident the rate is 19 % with costs deductible for residents of the European Union, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, and 24 % on gross rent with no deductions for everyone else. Most Rincón owners, however, are Spanish residents letting a second property or an inherited flat, and their question is different: how much of the year's cost can be attributed to the nights let, and what has to be documented to support it.
VAT: the short-stay exemption has survived
Letting a dwelling without hotel services is exempt under Article 20.Uno.23 of the VAT Act. For stays of up to 30 nights, article 7 of Royal Decree-law 26/2026 was to replace that with VAT at 10 %, keeping the exemption for lets of more than 30 nights and for the home you habitually live in if you let it for a few days. Congress rejected the decree-law on 2 October 2026.
The first steps, once a new date is fixed, will be modest: update your registration on Modelo 036, invoice each stay, and keep every cost invoice in your name, because the VAT on it will then be deductible. Under Directive (EU) 2025/516 that date cannot be later than July 2028. The reverse charge on platform commissions carries on: Airbnb bills from Ireland, Booking from the Netherlands, and you account for the Spanish VAT yourself through the ROI register and Modelo 349. The same decree-law would have let town councils in stressed residential market areas add, by local tax by-law, an IBI surcharge of up to 50 % on homes used as tourist accommodation; that power fell with it.
A season shaped by weekends, not by flights
Rincón works on domestic demand: families from Málaga and from inland Andalusia, weekends in spring and autumn, a solid July and August. That means many short stays rather than few long ones, and an occupancy figure that looks respectable in nights but is spread thinly across the calendar. Because deductible costs are apportioned by nights actually let, the difference between 120 nights and 70 nights is the difference between recovering a third of your annual costs and recovering a fifth.
Short stays also generate proportionally more work: more changeovers, more cleaning invoices, more guest registrations, more platform entries to reconcile at the year end. That administrative load is part of the real return on the property and it is worth counting before deciding to let.
Mixed use, and the trap inside it
Many properties here are let to tourists for part of the year and used by the family for the rest, or let long term to a tenant in winter. Those are distinct tax situations and they cannot be merged. Days let to tourists support the apportioned deductions; days under an ordinary lease follow different rules; days available to the owner generate imputed income if the owner is not resident. One calendar, marked contemporaneously, is what keeps the three apart. Reconstructing it later is possible but weak.
Local charges and planning
Waste tariffs and the planning classification of your address are municipal matters. They differ between councils, they change, and in some ordinances a tourist property is charged closer to a hotel than to a home. If a bill looks wrong it can be challenged, and the deadline for doing so is short, so it pays to read it rather than pay it automatically. We check the ordinance that applies to your specific address.
Residents pay for empty second homes too
Non-residents are not the only ones taxed on availability. A Spanish-resident owner with a second property that is neither let nor their main home also declares imputed income on it in the personal income tax return, calculated on the cadastral value. In a town like Rincón, where a great many owners are residents of the province with a flat by the sea, that is a line people routinely leave out of their return because nothing happened during the year. Something did happen: the property was available. The figure is modest but the omission is easy for the tax office to detect, since the cadastre already tells it what you own, and correcting it late costs more than including it on time.
Where we come in
We keep the recurring compliance running and flag the non-tax problems early, the community question above all. Statements in, costs apportioned to real nights, drafts for your approval, returns filed on time. From 60 € a month plus VAT, and no tie-in. Pricing · Tell us about your case.
Javier from Granada: eight summer weeks, family use the rest of the year
A schoolteacher living in Granada owns a flat with a communal pool at the Málaga end of the municipality. His family uses it in June, in September and at some weekends; in July and August he lets it by the week, 56 nights at 120 € in 2026. That is the typical owner here: rarely a non-resident, usually a Spanish resident with a second home. Everything goes into his income tax return in two pieces, the rent for the weeks let and imputed income for the days the flat was available to him:
| Piece | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Income | 56 nights × 120 € | 6,720 € |
| Direct costs | Commission 15 % (1,008 €) + 8 cleans at 60 € (480 €) | −1,488 € |
| Annual costs apportioned | (community 1,020 + IBI 540 + insurance 230 + utilities 900 + depreciation 1,425) × 56 / 365 | −631.34 € |
| Net rental income | 4,600.66 € | |
| Imputed income | Cadastral value 80,000 € × 1.1 % × 309 / 365 | 744.99 € |
Both figures join the general tax base. If his top slice is taxed at 30 %, the flat costs him (4,600.66 + 744.99) × 30 % = 1,603.69 €. The 1,425 € of depreciation is 3 % of 47,500 €, the building part of what he paid. No reduction applies: the relief for letting a tenant's permanent home does not cover summer weeks, nor seasonal lets; only long lets.
What the summer really costs him in tax
Javier would pay something even if he never let: with the flat available all year, imputed income would be 80,000 × 1.1 % = 880 €, or 264 € at 30 %. Letting, he pays 1,603.69 €. The true tax cost of the eight weeks is the difference, 1,339.69 €, a little under 20 % of what he took. That is the figure to have in front of you when deciding whether it is worth it.
The most widespread slip among owners here: the tax office's draft return shows the flat as a second home with its imputed income, it is confirmed as it stands, and the summer rent never appears. Platforms report what each host collects, and that cross-check arrives. Regularising then means tax, interest and, unless you move first, a penalty. Filing a supplementary return before they write is far cheaper, as the late filing calculator shows.
A flat owned as marital property
Bought under the community-of-property regime (gananciales), the rent and the imputed income are split 50/50 between the spouses, even if only one handles bookings and the money lands in that one's account. Filing separately, each declares half; jointly, the halves are added. What does not work is one spouse declaring it all because the platform lists them as host.
Families who come back every July
Here the same family often returns year after year and ends up booking direct, by bank transfer. That income is declared exactly like Airbnb income, and the stay is still a tourist stay that needs the code and the reporting of guest details. The Andalusian rules also set equipment conditions, one of which matters on a summer coast: cooling in the bedrooms and living room when the flat is let in the hot months. Complaint forms must be available from the first guest; the full list is checked in the decree in force before the first booking.
A September tenant, and a summer with no guests
Letting by the month to a teacher working in Málaga for the school year is common. That seasonal let is not a tourist let and is not registered with the Junta, has no income tax reduction and must end in time for summer: two contracts and a well-kept calendar, compared in tourist or seasonal. In a year when the family takes the flat for all of August, the code does not lapse and only imputed income appears in the return. If the decision is to stop for good, deregister the code: an active code with no activity draws questions from the Junta and the town hall and adds nothing.