19 %, with costs allowed
| Item | Your position |
|---|---|
| Non-resident income tax rate | 19 % |
| Inside the EU, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein? | Yes |
| Costs deductible against rent? | Yes, apportioned to the days actually let |
| Residence certificate | Ansässigkeitsbescheinigung from your local Finanzamt |
| Rental return | Annual, 1 to 20 April from the 2026 tax year |
Because Germany is a Member State you are on the favourable side of the only distinction Spanish law draws between foreign owners. Mortgage interest, community charges, the local property tax, buildings insurance, repairs, letting commission, utilities you bear and a depreciation allowance on the building all reduce the base before the 19 % is applied. The catch is the apportionment: Spain allows those costs only in the proportion the days actually let bear to the year. Twelve months of interest against ninety nights of letting gives you roughly a quarter of the interest, not all of it.
This is the single point at which German record-keeping habits pay for themselves. A clean log of arrival and departure dates, reconciled to the platform payouts and the bank account, converts directly into deductions. A vague recollection of a busy summer does not.
Two charges on one address
- Rental income, one return per property and per owner, gathered into a single annual filing. The 2024 and 2025 years went in between 1 and 20 January; from the 2026 year the window moves to 1 to 20 April of the following year, under Order HAC/623/2026.
- Imputed income for the days the property was simply at your disposal, at 1.1 % of the rateable value where that value was reviewed in the last ten years and 2 % where it was not, scaled by your ownership share and by the days, under period code 0A.
Spanish law knows nothing of joint assessment. Two names on the deed means two returns, each on its own half, every single year. A married couple with a flat let for part of the summer therefore produces four filings from one front door, and a family holding two apartments across three names produces a great many more. The Spanish authorities read the land registry and know precisely how many combinations of owner and property ought to appear.
Your Finanzamt certificate
The 19 % rate and the double taxation convention between Spain and Germany both rest on proof of where you live. Your local Finanzamt issues the residence certificate; Spain regards it as valid for one year from its date, so it is an annual errand rather than a one-off. Request the calendar year that matches the Spanish return, keep the expired ones filed, and never let a gap open. The convention in force is the one signed in February 2011, which replaced the much older 1966 treaty and has applied since the start of 2013.
What happens on the German return
Germany taxes residents on worldwide income, so the Spanish letting appears at home too, on the rental schedule with the foreign income schedule attached. The mechanism by which the double charge is relieved is the part worth discussing with your own adviser before you assume anything.
For income from immovable property, the German treaty practice has traditionally been exemption with progression: the Spanish rent is not taxed a second time in Germany, but it is taken into account in fixing the rate that applies to the rest of your German income, so a good year in Spain can quietly raise the tax on a German salary or pension. The alternative technique, a credit for the Spanish tax against the German tax on the same income, applies to other categories. Which one governs your particular receipts in your particular year is a question of German law, and it is your German adviser who should answer it.
The two computations will not agree, and they are not meant to. German rules on deductible expenses and on depreciation are not Spanish rules, so the German taxable figure and the Spanish one will differ. What matters is that the Spanish tax actually paid is evidenced, dated and attributable to a specific property and a specific owner, which is how we issue it.
We are Spanish lawyers and our advice covers Spanish law. What is said above about the Finanzamt and about German relief is orientation so that you know what to ask. Keep your Steuerberater; we will give them Spanish figures they can work with.
The errors that cost German owners money
- Claiming a full year of costs. The deduction is genuine but pro-rated, and an unapportioned claim is the most common reason a Spanish file is reopened.
- Declaring only the letting. The weeks the flat stood empty carry imputed income. It is a small charge that becomes a large one once four years of it arrive together with interest.
- A single return for a couple. Understandable, and wrong. Spain files by owner.
- Letting the certificate lapse. Without a current one, nothing about your favourable treatment is proven.
- Treating the 3 % withheld on a sale as the final tax. It is a payment on account. Where the gain is small, or there is none, the difference is reclaimed by claiming it.
- Holding through a German partnership or company without checking how Spain characterises it. That changes the rate, the return and the analysis on a later sale, and it is a question to settle before the first filing.
Our method with Germany
We set up each property and each owner once, take the rateable values, count the nights let from your statements, do the apportionment defensibly, prepare every return and send you the figures before filing. We diarise your certificate. We write in English or Spanish, and the fee is fixed and published on the pricing page. If the case is out of the ordinary, describe it and we will quote for it. The rules behind all of this are in our guides to non-resident property tax, form 210 and imputed income.
Überwintern: the winter in Spain and a house that works in summer
Germans have been buying in Spain for more than half a century: Mallorca and the Canaries first, then the Costa Blanca between Dénia and Altea, the Axarquía east of Málaga and the inland developments of Alicante. A large share are retirees who spend the cold months here — the Überwinterer — and many of them let the house by the month once they fly home in spring. Their surprise is rarely the tax itself. It is that Spain has no single annual return that gathers everything, but several per property and per owner, and that an empty house pays too.
Dénia, 2026: Klaus lets his house for three summer months
Klaus is the sole owner of a terraced house in Dénia bought in 2016 for 210,000 €, financed by a loan from his bank in Germany. In 2026 he lets it from June to August, 92 days, to a family from Madrid for 7,500 € in total, with no agency. The rest of the year he lives in it or it stands closed. The interest on the German loan counts, provided the loan financed this purchase and he can show it.
| Annual cost | Paid in the year | Deductible share (92/365) |
|---|---|---|
| Local property tax (IBI) | 480.00 € | 120.99 € |
| Community of owners | 900.00 € | 226.85 € |
| Home insurance | 250.00 € | 63.01 € |
| Electricity and water | 1,100.00 € | 277.26 € |
| Interest on the German loan | 2,400.00 € | 604.93 € |
| Depreciation, 3 % of 115,500 € of building value | 3,465.00 € | 873.37 € |
| Total | 8,595.00 € | 2,166.41 € |
Net rent: 7,500 − 2,166.41 = 5,333.59 €. At 19 %, the 2026 rental return comes to 1,013.38 €, filed between 1 and 20 April 2027 (by the 15th if he pays by direct debit). The other 273 days produce imputed income: a recently revised rateable value of 85,000 € × 1.1 % × 273/365 gives a base of 699.33 € and tax of 132.87 €, filed between 1 April and 31 December 2027 (23 December with direct debit). In all, Klaus pays 1,146.25 € in Spain for the house. The apportionment calculator gives the deductible slice of each cost for your own nights.
October to April is roughly 200 days. Someone who spends more than 183 days of a calendar year in Spain may be treated as tax resident here, and then Modelo 210 stops being their tax: they file Spanish income tax on worldwide income, often with Modelo 720 on top. If Germany still regards you as resident as well, the tie-breaker rules of the convention decide, not your own impression. Count the days with tickets and bank statements, and read our note on dual residence conflicts.
A folder the Agencia Tributaria will accept
German owners usually arrive with everything filed. The advantage is real only if what is filed is what Spain asks for: each cost needs an invoice in your name or a bank receipt, and each let day a contract or a statement that proves it. In practice that means the seasonal contract with dates and the payments into the account; the German bank's annual interest certificate, showing interest rather than capital and linking the loan to this house (a mixed-purpose loan counts only in proportion); the purchase deed, which is the base for depreciation; and the IBI and community receipts that many people pay by direct debit and never print. With that folder a query is answered in a week. Our guide to deductible costs goes through them one by one.
Selling, or leaving the house to the children
On a sale, the depreciation claimed in the years the house was let is deducted from its acquisition cost, which increases the gain, and that catches out more than one seller; see depreciation when you sell. On a death, Spain charges succession tax on the house because it is here, whatever happens in Germany, and non-resident heirs can now apply the rules of the region where it stands. Income tax conventions do not cover inheritances, so whether anything prevents a double charge there is a question to ask in good time, not on the day. The Spanish side is in inheritance and gift tax.