Non-resident property tax in Spain

If you own a property in Spain and live abroad, you pay Spanish tax on it. If you let it, on what you earn. If you do not, you still pay: on the notional income of having it available.

One return per property, per owner

Modelo 210 does not work like a personal tax return. There is one filing for each combination of property and owner. A couple with three apartments held 50/50 files six rental returns, and six more for imputed income if the properties were empty at any point.

Your country of residence sets the rate

The European Economic Area treatment is not a courtesy: the law makes it conditional on an effective exchange of tax information. That is why Iceland and Norway have been in since 2015 and Liechtenstein only since 11 July 2021. For income arising before that date, a Liechtenstein resident was taxed at 24 % on the gross amount, with no deductions.

On €12,000 of rent with €4,000 of costs, a French resident pays €1,520 and a UK or US resident pays €2,880. Same flat, same income.

Rental income: now filed annually

Since the 2024 tax year, rental income is grouped annually rather than quarterly. For 2024 and 2025 the window was 1–20 January; from 2026 it is 1–20 April of the following year (Order HAC/623/2026).

Imputed income for the empty days

For the days the property is at your disposal, Spain imputes a notional income of 1.1 % of the rateable value if it was revised in the last ten years, or 2 % if it was not, apportioned by ownership share and days. It is filed under period code 0A.

The certificate of residence, and why it expires every year

Your rate is not a fact about you: it is a fact you have to prove, year by year. The proof is a certificate issued by the tax administration of the country you live in, and it is valid for one year from its date of issue. A certificate obtained in March 2026 does not support a filing made in mid-2027.

Three details decide whether the one you have is any use:

• There are two different certificates. The ordinary one says you are registered as a taxpayer there. The one you normally need says you are resident for the purposes of the double tax treaty with Spain. They are different documents, and the wrong one is simply not accepted.
• It has to cover the right year. Not the year you apply, the year the income arose. Certificates are issued for a period, and a mismatch is the commonest reason a rate is refused.
• It takes time. Some administrations issue them in days and some in months. Asking for it the week before the deadline is how people end up filing at 24 % and then trying to recover the difference.

The certificate is also what stops the same income being taxed twice. Spain taxes the property because it is here; your own country usually taxes you on your worldwide income and then gives credit for the Spanish tax. Getting that credit almost always requires proof of what was paid in Spain, which is the filing receipt for the 210 — another reason those receipts are worth keeping somewhere you can find them. We handle the Spanish side and give your adviser at home what they need; we do not advise on how your own country's relief works.

Several owners: the arithmetic multiplies, it does not divide

Spanish non-resident income tax knows nothing about couples, families or households. Each co-owner is a separate taxpayer, and that has consequences people find genuinely surprising.

• Each owner needs their own Spanish tax number. One spouse cannot file for the other without a power of attorney, and a representative has to be appointed properly rather than assumed.
• Each owner needs their own certificate of residence. One certificate does not cover a household.
• Income and costs are split by the share in the deed, not by who paid the bill or who received the rent into their account. If one of you pays the community charge, it is still deducted in proportion.
• Two owners resident in different countries get different rates on the same property. It is routine for one half of a couple to file at 19 % with deductions and the other at 24 % without, particularly since the United Kingdom left the Union.
• Where a property is owned in bare ownership and usufruct, it is normally the usufructuary who declares the income and the imputation, and the bare owner who has nothing to declare until that changes. It is a common structure after an inheritance and it is regularly filed the wrong way round.

The practical effect is that the number of returns is properties multiplied by owners multiplied by types of income. That arithmetic, rather than the tax itself, is what makes people give up and stop filing.

Selling: the 3 % the buyer keeps

When a non-resident sells property in Spain, the buyer is required to withhold 3 % of the price and pay it to the tax office, using Modelo 211, within one month of the deed. It is not a tax on the sale: it is a payment on account of your tax on the gain, and it is the buyer's obligation, not the seller's choice.

What follows is the seller's job. You declare the gain on a Modelo 210 of its own, within three months of the end of the buyer's month, offsetting the 3 % already paid. Three outcomes are possible:

The gain is the transfer value less the acquisition value, and the acquisition value includes the tax and the costs you paid when you bought — transfer tax or VAT, notary, registry, agency — which is why the purchase file matters twenty years later. There is no indexation for inflation: a property bought in 1998 is compared with today's price without adjustment. The reliefs available to Spanish residents on selling a main home are mostly not available to non-residents, with the significant exception of reinvestment in a new main home, which is open to residents of the EU and the EEA where the property sold was your main home in Spain. Whether it applies to you is a question of fact, and it is worth settling before completion rather than after.

And the town hall wants its share too: plusvalía municipal

Running alongside all of this is a separate local tax on the increase in the value of the land, charged by the municipality on every transfer. Four things about it matter to a non-resident seller.

• It is owed by the seller on a sale — but where the seller is non-resident, the buyer becomes liable as substitute for paying it. Which means it is your buyer's problem in law and your problem in the negotiation, because they will want it withheld from the price.
• Since the rules were rewritten there are two ways of calculating it, one based on cadastral values and one on the actual increase in the land's value, and the taxpayer may use whichever produces the lower result.
• If there was no increase in value, there is no tax — but this has to be claimed and proved with the two deeds, not assumed.
• The deadline is short: thirty working days from the transfer, and six months, extendable, where the transfer is by death.

It is charged by the town hall and not by the national tax agency, so it has its own forms, its own office and its own calendar, and none of them are connected to your 210. It has its own page.

The rest of what comes with owning here

Two more obligations tend to arrive with the ones above. IBI and the local rubbish charge are billed by the town hall, usually once a year on dates each municipality sets for itself; unpaid, they accrue surcharges and are ultimately enforced against the property, and they are the most common reason a sale is held up at the last minute. And wealth tax reaches non-residents on their Spanish assets, with an allowance that keeps most single properties out of it but not all of them, alongside the separate levy on larger fortunes. Both have their own rules.

If an owner dies, the property is inside the Spanish inheritance tax net wherever the heirs live, with a short deadline and regional rules that vary enormously. That is legal work rather than compliance and it has its own line.

Our method with your Spanish property

We register each property and each owner, count the nights let from your platform statements, work out each owner's share, prepare every return and send you the figures before filing. We write to you in English, Spanish or French.

We also check the certificates, track their expiry dates before they matter, look at the years already open when you arrive, and tell you honestly if a previous adviser filed something we would have filed differently. What we do not do is promise you an outcome from the tax office — nobody honestly can — or advise you on the tax law of the country you live in. For that you appoint your own adviser there, and we deal with them directly so that the two sides agree.