24 % of the rent, before a single cost comes off
| Item | Your position |
|---|---|
| Non-resident income tax rate | 24 % |
| Inside the EU, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein? | No |
| Costs deductible against rent? | No — the tax falls on gross receipts |
| Residence certificate | Form 6166, obtained from the IRS by filing Form 8802 |
| Rental return | Annual, 1 to 20 April from the 2026 tax year |
The American reflex is to think in terms of net rental income: gross receipts less mortgage interest, HOA-style community fees, insurance, repairs, management fees, and depreciation. Spain will give a European owner most of that. It gives you none of it. On 20,000 € of rent with 12,000 € of running costs, an Italian owner pays 1,520 € and you pay 4,800 € — sixty per cent of the economic profit, on an asset that may well be carrying debt.
In July 2026 the Spanish Supreme Court admitted for review the question of whether denying the deduction to owners resident outside the European Union is compatible with the free movement of capital, a freedom which in European law extends to third countries as well. Nothing is resolved and nobody should promise you a refund. The sensible response is procedural: file exactly as the statute reads, without deducting, and then file a claim to rectify. That keeps each year within time. Years that are simply left alone go out of time on their own schedule, and no later judgment reopens them.
Start the 6166 months before you think you need it
To be taxed under the convention between Spain and the United States — the 1990 treaty as substantially amended by the protocol that entered into force in November 2019 — you need proof of US residence. That proof is Form 6166, a letter from the IRS, and you get it by filing Form 8802 and paying a user fee. It is not instantaneous. Applications routinely take weeks, the IRS will not generally certify a year before it has begun, and an application that arrives with a mismatched name, an unfiled return behind it or the wrong year requested comes back to the start of the queue.
The practical rule we give American clients is to treat the 8802 as an annual chore with a long lead time, filed well ahead of the Spanish deadline rather than in response to it. A Spanish filing season that begins with an unissued 6166 is a filing season that goes badly.
Citizenship, not just residence
The United States taxes its citizens and green card holders on worldwide income wherever they live. That single feature separates the American owner from every other nationality on this site. A German who moves to Spain stops being a German taxpayer; an American who moves anywhere remains an American taxpayer. Three consequences follow for a Spanish rental property.
The rent is reported in both countries, every year. It goes on the US return as rental income — gross receipts, with the deductions US law allows, including depreciation of the building over the longer recovery period that US rules apply to foreign residential property. The Spanish return, in parallel, ignores all of it and taxes the gross.
Relief comes through the foreign tax credit. The Spanish tax is claimed on Form 1116, in the passive category. Because the two countries are taxing very different numbers — Spain the gross, the United States a depreciated net — the credit frequently cannot absorb the whole Spanish charge in the year it arises. Excess credits in that category may be carried, within the limits US law sets. This is the point at which an American owner needs a US preparer who has seen foreign rental property before, and it is why we supply the Spanish payment evidence dated and itemised.
The Spanish bank account is itself a reporting item. Rent has to land somewhere, and it usually lands in a Spanish account opened for the purpose. Once the aggregate of your foreign accounts crosses the FBAR threshold at any moment in the year, the report is due regardless of whether any tax is owed, and the penalties for missing it have nothing to do with the amounts involved. Owners who worry meticulously about the rent and forget the account have their priorities exactly inverted.
A single-member LLC is invisible for US purposes and is very often not invisible for Spanish ones. Spain may look at the entity rather than through it, which changes the rate, the return, the treaty analysis and the position on a future sale. This is not a form-filling question, it is a structuring question, and it should be answered before the first return is filed rather than after the fifth. See US LLCs and Spain, and talk to us before you file.
The Spanish machinery, briefly
- One return per property and per owner. There is no joint filing in Spain. A married couple holding one apartment files two rental returns and two imputed income returns.
- The empty days are taxed. Spain assesses a notional income on the days the property was available to you, at 1.1 % of the rateable value if it was revised in the last ten years and 2 % otherwise, under period code 0A.
- Rent is annual now. Quarterly filing ended after 2023; the 2024 and 2025 years went in between 1 and 20 January, and from the 2026 year the window is 1 to 20 April of the following year, under Order HAC/623/2026.
- On a sale, 3 % of the price is withheld by the buyer as a payment on account. It is often more than the tax actually due, and it is reclaimed by making the claim, not by waiting.
Where our advice stops
We are Spanish lawyers and we do not prepare US returns or advise on US law. Everything above about the IRS is orientation, so that you know what to ask your own preparer and when to start. Keep a US adviser; we will hand them the Spanish numbers, the dates and the receipts.
What we do with the United States
We register each property and each owner, take the rateable values, count the nights let from your platform statements, prepare every return and send you the figures before filing. We keep the years open where the deduction argument is worth preserving. We track the date on your 6166 and tell you when to start the next 8802. Correspondence is in English and the fee is fixed — see pricing or tell us about the property. The underlying rules are in our guides to non-resident property tax and form 210.
Ellen's flat in Málaga: one year, in figures
The US residents who write to us have usually bought in a city with a direct or easy flight: Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia. Ellen is typical. Resident in the United States and sole owner of a flat in Málaga, in 2026 she lets it for 150 nights and collects 18,000 €. She pays a 15 % commission to a management company (2,700 €) and 7,300 € of annual running costs across community charges, IBI, insurance, utilities and depreciation. The rateable value is 120,000 €, with a revised valuation, and she spends about five weeks a year there, spread across several visits.
Rent: 18,000 € × 24 % = 4,320.00 €; neither the commission nor the costs count. Imputed income for the other 215 days: 120,000 × 1.1 % = 1,320 €; apportioned, 777.53 €; at 24 %, 186.61 €. Spanish total for the year: 4,506.61 €. Here is the same flat with an owner living in the EU:
| One flat, two addresses | Owner resident in the US | Owner resident in the EU |
|---|---|---|
| Base for the rent | 18,000.00 € | 12,300.00 € |
| Rate | 24 % | 19 % |
| Tax on the rent | 4,320.00 € | 2,337.00 € |
| Tax on imputed income | 186.61 € | 147.73 € |
| Spanish total | 4,506.61 € | 2,484.73 € |
The right-hand column takes off the whole commission and the annual costs in proportion to 150 nights (7,300 × 150 / 365 = 3,000 €). Almost twice the tax for living on the other side of the Atlantic. Try your own figures in the Modelo 210 calculator.
The costliest mistake we see among American owners is transferring to the Spanish return the net figure their preparer worked out for the US return, after expenses and depreciation. The Spanish return is built on the gross. Filing the net is under-declaring, and what follows is an assessment with interest and, depending on the case, a penalty.
Euros, dollars and what each administration sees
Modelo 210 is filed in euros, using the amounts actually collected on each booking. If the management company pays into a dollar account, what counts for Spain is the euro figure before conversion, not what landed in your US bank. Your preparer will apply their own conversion conventions; what helps is that both sides start from the same breakdown in euros, booking by booking, which is how we hand it over. To pay by direct debit you need an account with a Spanish collaborating bank; without one there are other ways to pay, and we explain them.
If the flat is ever inherited
A property in Spain falls within Spanish succession tax when it passes to heirs, wherever they live. It is worth looking at early, because the form of ownership — personal, joint, or through an LLC — changes the analysis considerably. See inheritance and gift tax.