19 %, on the profit
| 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 | Certificate of residence from your tax office |
| Rental return | Annual, 1 to 20 April from the 2026 tax year |
Membership of the Union gives you the lower rate and the deduction. Loan interest, the charges of the owners' association, the Spanish local property tax, insurance, repairs, letting commission, the utilities you pay and a depreciation allowance on the building all come off before the rate applies, restricted to the proportion of the year the flat was genuinely let.
The habit to unlearn is the Polish one. Private letting in Poland is now taxed under a lump-sum regime on the gross receipt, which is simple, cheap and requires no invoices at all. In Spain you must declare the gross, prove the costs and show the days. There is no flat-rate option, no threshold below which a small letting is ignored, and no way to reconstruct a deduction at the end of the year from memory. Keep the invoices as you go.
Two charges on one address
- Rental income, one return for each property and each owner, filed once for the whole year. The 2024 and 2025 years fell 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 stood at your disposal, at 1.1 % of the rateable value where that value was revised in the last ten years and 2 % where it was not, apportioned by share and by days, under period code 0A.
Spain has no joint filing and no household unit, so a married couple owning one apartment files four returns a year. The imputed income return is due even when there was no tenant, which regularly surprises owners who bought a place for family use and assumed that an empty flat is an invisible one.
Your certificate of residence
The 19 % rate and the double taxation convention between Spain and Poland both rest on a current certificate of residence, issued by the Polish tax administration on request and accepted by Spain for one year from its date. Ask for the calendar year that matches the Spanish return, keep the old ones for later queries, and do not let a gap open between them.
What happens on the Polish return
Poland taxes residents on worldwide income, so the Spanish rent is reported at home as well. The method by which the double charge is relieved deserves a real conversation with a Polish adviser rather than an assumption, for two reasons.
The first is that the convention between Spain and Poland is an old one, dating from the end of the 1970s, and older treaties of that generation typically relieved income from immovable property by exempting it while allowing it to raise the rate on the taxpayer's other income. The second is that Poland has been an active participant in the multilateral instrument that modifies bilateral treaties, and one of the things that instrument can change is precisely the method of relief, replacing an exemption with a credit. Whether, and from which year, that has happened between Spain and Poland is a question about the treaty as modified, and it is your Polish adviser who should answer it. The answer changes how much Polish tax you end up paying, so it is not a technicality.
What does not change, whichever method applies, is the Spanish side: Spain taxes the property because the property is in Spain, on the rent and on the days of availability.
We are Spanish lawyers and we advise on Spanish law. The paragraphs above about the Polish lump-sum regime and about the method of relief are orientation so that you know what to ask. Keep an adviser in Poland; we will supply the Spanish figures, dated and receipted, in a form they can use.
What goes wrong with Poland
- Expecting a flat-rate regime in Spain. There is none for non-resident letting.
- No invoices. Without them the deduction that Union residence buys you is worth nothing.
- A full year of costs against a short season. The apportionment to days let is compulsory.
- Filing nothing in a year with no tenants. Imputed income still arises.
- One return for two owners. Spain files by owner.
- Treating the 3 % withheld on a sale as the tax. It is a payment on account, often larger than the tax actually due.
The five-year rule stops at the border
Polish law exempts the disposal of private immovable property once five years have passed, counted from the end of the calendar year in which it was acquired. It is one of the best-known rules in Polish personal taxation and it produces a very common assumption among Polish owners of Spanish property: wait long enough and the sale is free of tax.
Spain has no equivalent. A non-resident selling Spanish property is taxed on the gain at 19 % whatever the holding period, and the rate is the same for European and non-European sellers alike. The buyer withholds 3 % of the price and pays it over on your account as a deposit against that tax, and where the real gain is modest a substantial part of the 3 % is recoverable — by making a claim, within time, not by waiting for anyone to notice.
So the two systems can diverge completely at the moment of sale: no Polish tax because the five years have run, and a full Spanish charge on the same transaction, with no Polish tax against which to credit it. Keep the purchase deed and every invoice for the acquisition costs, because they are what reduce the Spanish gain, and they are the documents nobody can reconstruct a decade later.
Our method with Poland
We register each property and each owner, take the rateable values, count the nights let from your statements, apportion the costs, prepare every return and send you the figures before filing. We keep your certificate current and document the Spanish tax in the form a Polish adviser will want it. Correspondence is in English or Spanish and the fee is fixed, on the pricing page; or tell us about the property. The underlying rules are in our guides to non-resident property tax, form 210 and imputed income.
The Polish buyer, seen from a Spanish office
Within a few years Polish owners have gone from a rarity in Costa Blanca deeds to filling notaries' offices on a Saturday morning. The profile we see most is a couple between thirty and fifty, earning in Poland, who buy a two-bedroom flat with a communal pool, use it for three or four weeks in July or August and put it on Airbnb or Booking for the rest of the season. Many work remotely and stretch their stays in spring. What trips them up is not the rate, which favours them, but habit: coming from a system where private letting is declared simply on what is received, they expect Spain to work the same way. Here costs can be deducted, but only those proved by an invoice and only for the nights actually let.
Piotr's year in Torrevieja, line by line
Piotr is sole owner of a flat in Torrevieja. In 2026 he lets it for 96 nights and collects 11,400 €. The platform charges 1,710 € of commission and he pays 960 € for cleaning between guests. Over the year he also pays 720 € of community charges, 410 € of IBI, 290 € of insurance and 1,140 € of electricity, water and internet. He bought for 150,000 €, with 60 % attributable to the building, so depreciation at 3 % is 2,700 €. The rateable value is 68,000 €, revised less than ten years ago.
Costs tied to each stay — commission and cleaning — come off in full: 2,670 €. Year-round costs add up to 5,260 € and come off in proportion to the nights let: 5,260 × 96 / 365 = 1,383.45 €. Net rent: 11,400 − 2,670 − 1,383.45 = 7,346.55 €, and at 19 % the rental return is 1,395.84 €. The 269 days without guests, including the month the family spent there, produce imputed income: 68,000 × 1.1 % = 748 €, cut to 269 days, 551.27 €, and 104.74 € of tax on a second return.
| How Piotr files | Base | Tax |
|---|---|---|
| With invoices and night-by-night apportionment | 7,346.55 € | 1,395.84 € |
| Without proving any cost | 11,400.00 € | 2,166.00 € |
| Imputed income for the days not let | 551.27 € | 104.74 € |
| Total with the costs properly documented | 1,500.58 € |
Compare the first two rows: on a modest flat, keeping the invoices is worth several hundred euros a year. You can try your own figures in the Modelo 210 calculator and the night-by-night split in the apportionment calculator.
The slip we see most among Polish owners is paying for maintenance from a relative's account, or asking for the repair invoice in the name of the husband's company. For the tax authority that cost is not yours. Each invoice must carry the name and NIE of the owner who deducts it; with two owners, each takes their share.
A certificate dated for the right year
What matters from Spain is the date on the Polish certificate: it is accepted for one year from issue. One requested in March 2025 no longer covers a return filed in April 2027 for 2026. Ask for one that confirms residence during the year being declared and keep it with the previous ones. If in some year you spent longer in Spain than usual — working remotely from the flat for several months, say — stop before filing anything: residence is decided on facts, as the guide to dual residence conflicts explains. And the folder we ask for each January is short: the platform's annual statement with every check-in and check-out, the community and IBI receipts, the insurance policy and receipt, utility invoices, any repair or furniture invoice and, if there is a loan, the bank's interest certificate. Start with the platform statement: it fixes the nights, and the nights decide how much of everything else comes off.