Registration with the regional government
The property is declared to the Consejería de Turismo of the Junta de Andalucía through a responsible declaration, and the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía issues a code which in this province takes the form VUT/MA/00000. It has to appear in every listing you publish. The Supreme Court judgment 620/2026 annulled the state-wide single register and left the Andalusian one exactly where it was.
The return depends on your residence, not the property
| Your position | What you file |
|---|---|
| Resident in Spain | Net rental profit inside your income tax return |
| Self-employed for this activity | Modelo 130 and Modelo 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 no deductions if they live elsewhere. A distinctive feature of this municipality is how many owners are Spanish residents with a second property, for whom none of that applies: their rent simply joins the rest of their income, and the questions become which costs they can prove and how the year is apportioned.
VAT: the exemption holds, the 10 % is pending
Article 20.Uno.23 of the VAT Act exempts residential letting, and that covers most holiday lets. Royal Decree-law 26/2026 of 29 September narrowed it, so that lets of furnished homes for up to 30 nights carried VAT at 10 % and only longer lets without hotel services kept the exemption. The text appeared in the BOE on 30 September and was voted down in Congress on 2 October, before it had applied.
For owners on this stretch of coast who let by the week in summer and by the month in winter, the rule that eventually replaces it (no later than July 2028, the date in the EU directive) will mean two treatments in one flat, with the VAT on shared costs apportioned between them. The reverse charge on the commissions charged by Airbnb from Ireland and Booking from the Netherlands continues regardless, through the ROI register and Modelo 349.
A domestic season behaves differently
Torre del Mar fills with Spanish families in July and August and with visitors from Granada and Córdoba on long weekends, rather than with northern Europeans staying a fortnight. That produces a pattern of many short bookings concentrated in a narrow window, which has two practical effects.
The first is on costs: a season of ten or twelve weeks means only that proportion of the annual community fees, IBI, insurance, waste charge, supplies, mortgage interest and depreciation reaches the return. The second is on paperwork: fifty bookings of three nights each generate fifty entries to reconcile, fifty guest registrations and fifty cleaning invoices, which is far more administration than a dozen fortnightly stays producing the same income. Neither is a reason not to let; both are reasons to have a system before the season starts.
Inland and coastal in one municipality
A flat in the old town of Vélez-Málaga is not competing for the same guest as a beachfront apartment ten minutes away, and it will not fill on the same calendar. Where an owner holds both, each property needs its own return, its own cadastral value for imputed income and its own apportionment. Costs shared between them, such as a single insurance policy, have to be split on a basis that can be explained. The tax office receives its data property by property, so that is the level at which the file has to make sense.
The community, and the bills the town hall sends
Since 2025 a community of owners can limit or condition tourist letting with three fifths of the votes. The buildings around Torre del Mar are typically mixed, with permanent residents living alongside summer lets, and mixed buildings are where these proposals originate. Statutes and recent minutes are worth reading before you buy and before you spend.
Municipal charges vary from one council to the next, particularly the waste tariff, where some ordinances treat a tourist property much more like a hotel than a home. The planning classification of your address can also matter independently of your tourism code. Both are municipal questions and we check yours specifically rather than generalising.
If you have been letting without filing
It is a common enough situation in a town where letting started informally and grew. The route out is a voluntary regularisation: you file the missing returns before the tax office writes to you, and the cost is a surcharge that increases with the delay but stops there. If instead the letter arrives first, the same omission becomes a penalty, which is a different order of magnitude and carries a record. The platforms now report bookings, so the arithmetic that produces those letters is automatic. Coming forward is rarely as expensive as owners fear, and waiting is reliably more expensive than they hope.
The cadastral value quietly decides a lot
Two figures in your file come from the cadastre rather than from anything you did: the split between land and building, which determines how much depreciation you can take, and the cadastral value itself, which determines the imputed income on days the property was available. The second is applied at a lower percentage where the value has been revised within the preceding years and at a higher one where it has not, so a municipal revaluation can change your bill in a year when nothing about the property changed at all. It is worth reading the cadastral certificate rather than assuming, and worth checking that the surface area and the use recorded there match reality, because an error in the cadastre propagates into the IBI, into the imputed income and into the depreciation simultaneously.
What we look after
Recurring compliance for owners on both sides of the municipality: reconciling the bookings, apportioning the costs, keeping the imputed income right for the closed months, and filing on time. From 60 € a month plus VAT, and no tie-in. Pricing · Tell us about your case.
Tom and Anna's farmhouse in the Axarquía hills
Beyond the old town and the beaches, the municipality spreads into hills of avocado groves and scattered houses where northern Europeans have settled for decades. Those houses cause the most trouble and get the least explanation. Tom is British and Anna German, but both have lived in Germany for fifteen years. In 2012 they bought a country house with a pool for 210,000 € and let it sixteen weeks a year.
Planning papers come before the tourism code
Some of the Axarquía's country houses were built without a licence, or under licences that did not cover what stands today. Andalusian law has created routes to recognise many of them, such as the «assimilated to out-of-planning» status (asimilado a fuera de ordenación, usually shortened to AFO), which allows use even where full legalisation is impossible. Others have no recognition at all. It matters because a tourist let requires a dwelling that may lawfully be used as one, and the tourism authority does not cure what planning lacks. So the first thing we ask for is the planning file: the occupancy licence, a certificate of age, the AFO resolution, whatever exists. What the town hall requires in each case is checked on the property's own file.
The responsible declaration takes minutes, which tempts owners to register a house with no planning recognition. Declaring compliance that does not exist opens the door to cancellation and disciplinary proceedings, and puts the house on the municipal radar. The right order is the reverse: first learn what the house is for planning purposes, then decide how to let it. In the countryside there is also a separate figure, the rural tourist dwelling, with its own decree, requirements and code; which one fits depends on where the house is and how the land is classified.
The year in euros
Living in Germany, they are non-residents at 19 % with costs deductible; Tom's British passport changes nothing, because residence is what counts. Each files Modelo 210 for their half.
| 2026 | Whole house | Each owner (50 %) |
|---|---|---|
| Income: 16 weeks at 1,300 € | 20,800.00 € | 10,400.00 € |
| Commission (15 %) and 16 cleans at 90 € | −4,560.00 € | −2,280.00 € |
| Annual costs apportioned to 112 days | −2,936.55 € | −1,468.28 € |
| Net rental income | 13,303.45 € | 6,651.73 € |
| Tax at 19 % | 2,527.66 € | 1,263.83 € |
| Imputed income, 253 days (90,000 € × 2 % × 253 / 365) | 1,247.67 € | 623.84 € |
| Tax on it at 19 % | 237.06 € | 118.53 € |
A farmhouse's costs differ from a flat's: no community fee, but pool upkeep (1,800 €), garden (1,200 €), dearer water and power (2,600 €), insurance (520 €), IBI (300 €) and depreciation (3,150 €, 3 % of 105,000 € of building value): 9,570 € in all, of which 112 days' worth is deducted. Each owner's German residence certificate supports the 19 % rate; see the certificate for Modelo 210.
The man who fills the water tank
Out here many payments go to small suppliers: the water delivery, the pool cleaner, the neighbour's gardener. No invoice, no deductible cost, and in a rural house those costs are a large slice of the total. Invoices bearing both owners' NIEs from the first month avoid losing several hundred euros of deductions a year. Where the deed is in one name only, that owner files for the whole, whoever put up the money; changing ownership has its own tax cost, so review the deed before deciding.
Two or three winter months by the fire
Between November and March the hills draw retired northerners wanting a house with a fireplace for two or three months. Stays of more than two consecutive months by the same guest fall outside the tourist dwelling rules and go under a seasonal contract; for a non-resident they still go on the same Modelo 210. They count as days let, reducing imputed income and raising the share of costs, notably firewood, heating oil and electricity. And on an eventual sale: municipal capital gains tax only reaches urban land, so if the cadastre classes the plot as rustic it is not due, worth checking on the cadastral certificate; a non-resident seller also suffers the buyer's 3 % withholding. More in selling as a non-resident.