Your rate is 19 %, and expenses come off first
| 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 | Issued by the Direction générale des Finances publiques |
| Rental return | Annual, 1 to 20 April from the 2026 tax year |
As a Member State resident you deduct before the rate applies: loan interest, community of owners fees, the Spanish local property tax, insurance, repairs, agency commission, the utilities you pay, and a depreciation allowance on the building. Spain then restricts the total to the share of the year during which the property was genuinely let. A house let for four months carries a third of its annual running costs into the rental return, and the remaining two thirds are relieved nowhere.
On 15,000 € of rent from 130 nights against 10,000 € of yearly costs, the allowable slice is roughly 3,560 €, the taxable profit roughly 11,440 € and the Spanish tax roughly 2,170 €. A British owner of the identical house, outside the Union since Brexit, would hand over 3,600 € on the same lettings.
One return for each property and each owner
There is no household return in Spain and no equivalent of the foyer fiscal. A couple owning a house jointly files two rental returns and two imputed income returns, each on their own half. Add a second property and the count doubles again.
- Rental income is now grouped annually. The 2024 and 2025 years were filed between 1 and 20 January; from the 2026 year the window becomes 1 to 20 April of the following year, under Order HAC/623/2026.
- Imputed income covers the days the property waited for you, at 1.1 % of the rateable value if that value was revised within the last ten years and 2 % if it was not, apportioned by share and by days, filed under period code 0A. Owners who use the house themselves for most of the year and let it for a few weeks often find this is the larger of the two charges.
The certificate, and the convention
To be taxed at 19 % and to rely on the convention between Spain and France of 10 October 1995, you need a current certificate of tax residence from the Direction générale des Finances publiques. Spain treats it as valid for a year. Request it for the calendar year the Spanish return covers, which is straightforward because France also runs on the calendar year, and keep the old ones: a query raised in 2028 about the 2025 return is answered with the 2025 certificate.
What happens on the French return
A French resident declares worldwide income, so the Spanish rent is reported in France as well, on the foreign income schedule alongside the property schedule, and carried into the main return. Under the 1995 convention, income from immovable property situated in Spain is taxable in Spain, and France relieves the double charge by granting a credit designed to cancel the French tax on that income while still counting it in working out your overall rate. The practical effect for most owners is that the Spanish rent produces little or no additional French income tax but does influence the rate applied to everything else. Your own adviser will tell you exactly how it lands in your situation.
Two further French points belong on the conversation list, and neither is Spanish tax. The first is the French wealth tax on real estate, which reaches property held anywhere in the world by a French resident, so a Spanish house counts towards the threshold and has to be valued each year. The second is that Spain levies its own wealth-type charge on property held here by non-residents, with its own thresholds; where both apply, the interaction needs looking at rather than assuming. Our note on the Spanish wealth tax sets out the Spanish half.
We are Spanish lawyers and we advise on Spanish law. The French paragraphs here are orientation so that you know what to raise and with whom. Keep your notaire or your conseil in France; we will provide the Spanish figures, dated and receipted, in a form that supports your credit claim.
What goes wrong with France
- Deducting the whole year of charges. The apportionment to days let is not optional, and an unapportioned claim is the classic reason a file is reopened.
- Declaring the letting and forgetting the rest. Imputed income applies to every day the house was available to you, including the days you were actually in it.
- One return for two owners. Spain does not pool a couple.
- Assuming a Spanish bank account is enough. Paying tax is not the same as declaring it, and the Spanish system will not assess you by itself.
- Ignoring the 3 % on a sale. The buyer withholds it as a payment on account. It regularly exceeds the tax actually due, and the surplus is refunded only if it is claimed.
Letting to holidaymakers is a licensed activity
French owners letting a Spanish house for short stays meet a second body of rules that has nothing to do with the tax return. Tourist letting is regulated by each Spanish region, and in most of them the property must be registered before it can lawfully be advertised, with the registration number shown in the listing. The conditions differ from region to region, they have been tightened repeatedly, and a property let without the registration can be penalised even where every tax return was correct. The owners' association may also have something to say: Spanish law now allows a qualified majority of a building to restrict tourist letting, and a resolution passed in your absence still binds you.
The two regimes increasingly talk to each other, because letting platforms in the Union report hosts, nights and amounts to the tax administrations and that information is exchanged between Member States. The nights that drive your Spanish deduction are therefore nights the authorities are likely to know about independently. Our note on tourist rentals sets out what the activity actually involves.
What we do with France
We register each property and each owner, take the rateable values, count the nights let from your statements, apportion the costs properly, prepare every return and send you the figures to approve before anything is filed. We keep an eye on the date of your certificate. We correspond in French, English or Spanish. The fee is fixed — see pricing or tell us about the property. The general rules are in our guides to non-resident property tax and form 210.
Roses, 2026: Claire and Julien put the numbers on paper
A deliberately ordinary couple from Toulouse. In 2019 Claire and Julien bought an apartment in Roses, on the Costa Brava, for 240,000 €, half each. A local agency lets it for 80 nights across June, part of August and September, pays them 9,600 € and invoices its commission separately: 1,920 €. For the rest of the year the flat is theirs, whether they are in it or it is shut.
The cost that exists only because they let
The agency's commission would not be paid at all without guests, so all 1,920 € goes against the rent. Cleaning between stays or a laundry bill for bed linen, had they paid one, would follow the same rule.
The costs that run all year
Local property tax 620 €, community charges 1,100 €, insurance 280 €, electricity, water and internet 1,300 €, and depreciation of 4,320 € — 3 % of the part of the price attributable to the building, here 60 %, or 144,000 €. Together 7,620 €, of which only the let fraction counts: 80 days out of 365, 21.92 %, which is 1,670.14 €.
| Roses flat, tax year 2026 | Amount |
|---|---|
| Rent received through the agency | 9,600.00 € |
| Agency commission, in full | − 1,920.00 € |
| Year-round costs, 80/365 of them | − 1,670.14 € |
| Net rental profit of the flat | 6,009.86 € |
| Claire's half, and Julien's half | 3,004.93 € each |
| Rental return, each spouse, at 19 % | 570.94 € |
| Imputed income: 98,000 € × 1.1 % × 285/365, halved | 420.86 € each |
| Imputed income return, each spouse, at 19 % | 79.96 € |
The 1.1 % applies because the rateable value in Roses was revised within the previous ten years; otherwise it would be 2 %. The 285 days are simply the ones not let, whether the family was on the terrace or in Toulouse. The couple's Spanish bill for the year comes to roughly 1,301.80 €, spread over four separate returns. You can rerun it with your own figures in the Modelo 210 calculator, and the day-by-day split is explained in apportioning costs to the nights let.
It is the sentence we hear most from French owners, and the origin of most of the letters the Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax authority, sends them. Putting the Spanish rent on your French return does not replace Modelo 210: they are two obligations in two countries, and Spain collects first because the flat is here. Platforms now report each host's nights and takings, so Spain usually knows how often you let even if you never told it.
A French property company is a different file
Some French buyers arrive with the reflex of holding the flat through a société civile immobilière, as they would at home. If the Spanish deed is in the name of such a company, the Spanish analysis changes and it is not the one on this page: we act only for individuals. Everything above assumes the deed names you personally, each with a stated share.
Brothers and sisters in indivision
When the flat reaches several siblings by inheritance, each of them files on their own share, even if one sibling runs the lettings and keeps the accounts. The sibling who files one return for the whole flat in their own name makes a mistake that can be put right, but is better avoided. What Spain charges when a registered owner dies is covered in international inheritances and gifts. And a flat with three unfiled years is regularised with a surcharge, which costs far less than waiting for the letter to arrive on its own.