Your rate is 24 %, and it bites the gross rent
| Item | Your position |
|---|---|
| Non-resident income tax rate | 24 % |
| Inside the EU, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein? | No, since the end of the transition period |
| Costs deductible against rent? | No — the charge falls on the gross receipt |
| Residence certificate | Issued by HMRC, applied for online |
| Rental return | Annual, 1 to 20 April from the 2026 tax year |
Before Brexit a British owner was a European one: 19 % of the profit. Today it is 24 % of the turnover. Put a mortgage on the property and the arithmetic turns genuinely ugly. Rent of 18,000 € against 11,000 € of interest, community fees, local property tax, insurance and agency commission leaves a real profit of 7,000 €. A French owner would pay 1,330 € on that. You pay 4,320 € — more than sixty per cent of what the flat actually earned you, and the Spanish system regards that as a perfectly ordinary outcome.
The Supreme Court accepted in July 2026 that it will examine whether excluding owners resident outside the European Union from the deduction offends the free movement of capital, which is the one Treaty freedom that also protects movements to and from third countries. That argument is exactly the British owner's argument. It is not won. What you can do, and what we do as a matter of routine, is file on the strict letter of the law and immediately apply to have the return rectified. The claim holds the year open. Doing nothing lets it run out of time, and if the point is eventually decided in the taxpayer's favour the refund will reach the people who kept their years alive, not the people who read about it afterwards.
Two returns, not one, and one of each per owner
British owners are used to a single self-assessment that gathers up a life. Spain does the opposite. There is one form 210 for each property and for each owner, and within that there are two different things to declare:
- Rental income for the days the property was actually let, now grouped into one annual return. For the 2024 and 2025 tax years it went in between 1 and 20 January; from the 2026 tax year the window shifts to 1 to 20 April of the following year under Order HAC/623/2026.
- Imputed income for every other day, on the theory that having a Spanish home permanently at your disposal is itself worth something. It is 1.1 % of the rateable value if that value has been revised in the last decade and 2 % if it has not, scaled by your ownership share and by the days, and it goes in under period code 0A with a far longer filing window.
A couple who own a place jointly and let it for part of the summer therefore file four returns for one flat in one year. It is not a trick; it is simply a system built around the asset rather than around the household.
Your HMRC certificate, and the dates that do not line up
To be taxed correctly, and to invoke the double taxation convention between Spain and the United Kingdom signed on 14 March 2013 and in force since 12 June 2014, you need a current certificate of residence from HMRC. It is applied for online and it is good for a year. Let it lapse and the Spanish authorities are entitled to treat you as unproven and apply their least generous reading of your position.
Here is the practical trap. HMRC works to a tax year running from 6 April to 5 April; Spain works to the calendar year, and so does form 210. A certificate that describes you as UK resident for 2026–27 does not map neatly onto a Spanish return for the calendar year 2026, and an officer at a Spanish tax office is not obliged to do the arithmetic in your favour. We ask HMRC for the wording that covers the calendar period, and we keep the certificate dated so that the Spanish filing and the British evidence describe the same stretch of time.
What happens at the British end
A UK resident is taxed on worldwide income, so the Spanish rent goes on the foreign pages of the self-assessment return as well, with foreign tax credit relief for the Spanish tax paid. Two points follow from that, and both are worth raising with your accountant.
First, the credit relieves what was correctly charged in Spain, and it is capped at the UK tax on the same income. Where the Spanish charge is 24 % of the gross and the UK charge is calculated on a profit after interest and expenses, the Spanish tax can easily exceed the British tax on the same letting. The excess is not refunded by HMRC. It is simply lost, and that is the true cost of the post-Brexit rate: not the headline difference between 19 and 24, but the part of the Spanish tax the credit cannot absorb.
Second, the mismatch of tax years has to be worked through when you claim. Spanish tax paid on the calendar year 2026 has to be allocated sensibly against the British years it straddles, and the evidence you hand your accountant should be dated to make that possible.
If you arrived in the United Kingdom recently, the regime for foreign income and gains that replaced the old remittance basis from April 2025 may change how the Spanish rent is treated at home. That is a question for a UK adviser, and it changes nothing at all about the Spanish return: Spain taxes the property because the property is in Spain, whatever the UK does with the same income.
We are Spanish lawyers. What is written above about HMRC and about British relief is context so that you know what to ask for. Keep your own accountant at home and we will give them the Spanish figures, dated, receipted and in a form they can use for the credit claim.
The things that go wrong most often
- Filing on the profit. Owners whose British accountant naturally starts from net income hand over a Spanish return built on the wrong base. It is the one error that invites a correction letter with interest attached.
- One return for a couple. Two owners means two returns, each on their own share, every year.
- Forgetting the empty months. The property is let for eight weeks and declared for eight weeks. The other forty-four weeks carry imputed income, and the omission is trivially easy for the Spanish authorities to spot from the land registry.
- A certificate that ran out. It costs nothing to renew and a great deal to be without.
- Selling without thinking. On a sale, the buyer must withhold 3 % of the price and pay it over. That is a payment on account, not the tax, and a British seller with a modest gain is frequently owed money back.
What we do with the United Kingdom
We take the addresses and the ownership shares, pull the rateable values, count the nights let from your platform statements, prepare a return for every property and every owner, and send you the numbers before anything goes in. Where the deduction point is worth preserving we file and then lodge the rectification claim so the year stays open. We diarise your HMRC certificate. Everything is in English, and the fee is fixed — see pricing, or tell us about the property and we will tell you what it would cost. The underlying rules are set out in our guides to non-resident property tax and to form 210.
Mijas, 2026: what being outside the Union costs Peter and Sandra
Peter and Sandra, resident in Kent, own an apartment in a Mijas development 50/50. In 2026 they let it for 110 nights and collect 14,000 €. They pay 2,100 € of commission to the management company and 6,500 € of year-round costs, depreciation included. The rateable value is 120,000 € and has not been revised in the last ten periods, so imputed income runs at 2 %.
| Mijas flat | As UK residents | Had they lived in the EU |
|---|---|---|
| Income | 14,000.00 € | 14,000.00 € |
| Management commission | not deducted | − 2,100.00 € |
| Year-round costs × 110/365 | not deducted | − 1,958.90 € |
| Base of the rental return | 14,000.00 € | 9,941.10 € |
| Rate | 24 % | 19 % |
| Tax on the rent, both together | 3,360.00 € | 1,888.81 € |
Each files a rental return for 1,680 €. The gap with a neighbour living in Dublin who owns the flat next door is 1,471.19 € a year, with nothing different but the address. Imputed income comes on top: 120,000 € × 2 % × 255/365 gives 1,676.71 €, 838.36 € each, and 201.21 € of tax each. It makes no difference that for those 255 days they were in Kent and unable to enter the Schengen area: imputed income depends on availability, not on use.
Ninety days in every hundred and eighty
Since the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020, British visitors are limited to 90 days in any 180 in the Schengen area, and that has changed how many owners use the house. Some now let more weeks because they can no longer spend the whole winter there. More letting means a larger rental return, at a rate that allows no costs.
The years from 2021 to 2025, before someone else looks at them
Owners who carried on filing as before, at 19 % with costs, have a difference outstanding in each of those years. The tax authority's right to review them expires four years after the end of the filing period, so the oldest may already be closed and the recent ones not. Correcting them of your own accord has a known price: a surcharge starting at 1 % and rising a point for each full month late, up to 15 % after a year, plus interest from then on. Waiting for a letter replaces the surcharge with a penalty. The late filing calculator gives the figure before you decide.