Renta Imputada: The Tax on Owning Property You Do Not Rent Out

What Renta Imputada Actually Means

If you own a home in Spain but do not live there and do not rent it out, the Agencia Tributaria still expects you to declare something every year. Not rental income, because there is none, but what Spanish tax law calls renta imputada, or imputed income. The idea sounds strange the first time you hear it. You have not earned a single euro from the property, yet the tax office treats you as if you had, simply because you own it and could, in theory, use it or profit from it.

This applies to non resident owners of Spanish property that sits empty for most or all of the year, or that is used only personally, such as a holiday apartment the family visits twice a year. The moment that property generates no rental income at all, Spain assumes a notional benefit from ownership itself and taxes that benefit under the IRNR, the non resident income tax regime. The return you use to declare and pay it is Modelo 210, the same form used for several different categories of non resident income, including actual rental income when a property is let out. Renta imputada is filed separately from any rental income tax, and the two should never be confused or combined on the same declaration period.

It is worth being precise about who this affects. If your Spanish property is rented out year round, you declare that rental income under a different heading of Modelo 210, and renta imputada generally does not apply to the periods it was rented. If it stands empty, or you and your family use it without renting it to anyone, renta imputada is what applies. Many owners who bought a place purely as a holiday home, with no intention of ever renting it, are surprised to learn there is a tax bill waiting for them anyway.

Why Spain Taxes a Property You Are Not Renting Out

The logic behind renta imputada is older than most owners realise, and it is not unique to non residents either. Spanish tax law has long treated a second home, resident owned or not, as a source of implicit benefit. The reasoning is that ownership of a property beyond your main residence gives you something of value, whether you monetise it or not. You could rent it, you could sell it, you could simply enjoy having somewhere to stay in Spain whenever you want. The tax office decided decades ago that this latent value deserves a modest, notional tax, rather than escaping taxation altogether just because no cash changes hands.

For residents, this shows up in the IRPF, the personal income tax return, as an addition alongside their other income. For non residents, it shows up as its own Modelo 210 filing under the IRNR framework, because non residents are not part of the ordinary IRPF system at all. Either way, the principle is the same: Spain does not let an unused or personally used second property sit entirely outside the tax base.

It is also worth remembering that this is not a punitive measure aimed at foreign owners. It applies just as much to a Spanish resident who owns a holiday flat in Alicante while living in Madrid. Non resident owners simply experience it through a different form and a different filing calendar, which is where a lot of the confusion tends to start.

How the Imputed Income Percentage Is Calculated

The General Rule: 2 Percent of the Valor Catastral

The starting point for the calculation is the property's valor catastral, the administrative value assigned to it by the local cadastre, which is usually well below its market value and appears on the annual IBI property tax bill. As a general rule, the imputed income is calculated as 2 percent of that valor catastral. That figure, not the market value and not the price you paid, is what feeds into the Modelo 210 calculation, and from it the applicable IRNR rate is then applied to arrive at the actual tax due.

The Reduced Rate of 1.1 Percent, and Why 2026 Is Not Yet Certain

There is a lower rate of 1.1 percent, but it does not apply automatically to every property. It is reserved for properties whose valor catastral was revised through a collective valuation procedure that took effect on or after 1 January 2012. In practice, this means the reduced rate depends entirely on when your municipality last carried out a cadastral revision, which varies significantly from one town to another and is not something an owner can simply assume applies to them. Two nearly identical holiday apartments in neighbouring towns can end up on different rates purely because their municipalities revised cadastral values in different years.

Here is where honesty matters more than convenience. As of 23 September 2026, the Agencia Tributaria's own published guidance on this reduced rate, last updated in March 2026, explicitly states that the 1.1 percent rate applies to tax periods 2023, 2024 and 2025 for properties that meet the revision condition. It does not yet say what happens from 2026 onward. There is no published confirmation, as of this writing, that the 1.1 percent rate continues beyond 2025, and equally no confirmation that it reverts automatically to 2 percent. This is a genuine open point in current guidance, not a detail this article is glossing over. If your property currently qualifies for the reduced rate, the responsible approach when you come to file 2026 imputed income is to check the Agencia Tributaria's guidance again at that time, or confirm the applicable rate with a gestor, rather than assuming either outcome. Given how much difference 2 percent versus 1.1 percent makes to the final bill, this is not a detail worth guessing on.

A Torrevieja Apartment That Sits Empty Most of the Year

Consider a Dutch couple who bought a two bedroom apartment in Torrevieja a few years ago. They visit for six or seven weeks a year, spread across the summer and a stretch around Christmas, and the rest of the time the apartment simply sits there, furniture covered, shutters down. They have never rented it out, partly because they like knowing it is always ready for them and partly because they never got round to registering as a holiday rental with the regional tourism authority.

Because the apartment generates no rental income, the couple's Spanish tax obligation each year is renta imputada, not a rental income declaration. Their gestor pulls the valor catastral from the IBI receipt, checks whether Torrevieja has had a qualifying cadastral revision that would put them on the 1.1 percent rate rather than the standard 2 percent, and calculates the imputed income accordingly. That figure then has the relevant IRNR rate applied to produce the amount due on Modelo 210.

What catches couples like this out is not the calculation itself, once it is explained, but the assumption that an empty property owes nothing simply because it earns nothing. It is also worth noting that if they ever decided to rent the apartment out for part of the year, even a few weeks, they would need to declare that rental income separately for those periods, while renta imputada would still apply to the months it stood empty. The two obligations exist side by side rather than replacing one another. Their situation is a fairly ordinary one among non resident owners in the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol areas, where a large share of foreign owned property is used exactly this way, for personal holidays rather than as an income generating rental.

Filing Modelo 210 for Imputed Income: Old Window Versus New Window

The Old Window, Still in Force for 2025 Income

Until now, the filing window for a Modelo 210 imputed income return has run from 1 January to 31 December of the year following the year the income accrued. In other words, imputed income that accrued in 2025 is declared and paid at any point between 1 January and 31 December 2026. That window is currently open and remains unaffected by the change described below. Owners with 2025 imputed income to declare should treat this year, 2026, as their filing year exactly as before.

The New Window, Arriving for 2026 Income

Orden HAC/623/2026, published in the BOE on 12 June 2026, changes the filing window for imputed income going forward. Starting with imputed income that accrues in tax year 2026, the window moves to run from 1 April to 31 December of the following year, rather than from 1 January. In practical terms, imputed income accrued in 2026 will be declared and paid between 1 April 2027 and 31 December 2027, not from 1 January 2027 as the old rule would have implied.

The distinction matters because the two tax years sit right next to each other on the calendar but follow different rules. 2025 imputed income keeps the old window, open now through the end of 2026. 2026 imputed income follows the new window, which will not open until April of 2027. Nothing changes about how the imputed income itself is calculated, only about when the Modelo 210 return covering it can be filed.

Why This Filing Window Change Is Worth Getting Right

The risk here is not filing late, it is misreading which calendar year's income you are dealing with and drawing the wrong conclusion from that. An owner who hears, in early 2027, that the Modelo 210 window for imputed income has not opened yet might reasonably assume they have already missed a deadline. In fact, if that owner is thinking about 2026 imputed income, no deadline has passed at all, because the window for 2026 income does not begin until 1 April 2027 under the new order. Equally, an owner still catching up on 2025 imputed income needs to remember that its window follows the old rule and closes on 31 December 2026, regardless of what changes for 2026 income onward.

This kind of date confusion is common enough with the old system, where owners occasionally filed against the wrong calendar year by mistake. Introducing a second, later opening date for a different tax year raises the chances of that same confusion, particularly for owners who file once a year and do not track the underlying regulation closely. The safest habit is to always anchor the filing question to a specific accrual year first, 2025 or 2026, and only then ask which window applies to that year, rather than assuming the current calendar year automatically tells you the answer.

It is also sensible to build in some patience around the new window. Because it opens on 1 April rather than 1 January, owners who are used to filing early in the year for the previous period will simply need to wait three additional months once they are dealing with 2026 accrued income. That is a shift in habit more than anything else, but habits are exactly where filing mistakes tend to happen.

Where Imputed Income Sits Inside the Broader IRNR Picture

Renta imputada is only one slice of what falls under the IRNR. The same non resident income tax framework also covers actual rental income, which is taxed differently and, for non residents outside the EU or EEA, without the deductions available to EU or EEA residents. A property can even move between the two categories within a single year if it is rented for part of it and left empty or used personally for the rest, in which case both a rental income declaration and a renta imputada declaration may be needed for the same year, covering different periods.

If you already have a Spanish holiday property and want to understand how the rental income side of Modelo 210 works, including how it differs from the imputed income case covered here, it is worth reading the companion piece on handling your Spanish tax return as a holiday home owner. For a fuller reference on the form itself, our Modelo 210 reference page walks through the filing process in more detail, and the dictionary entry on renta imputada is a quick place to double check the definition whenever you need a refresher.

None of this is designed to be intimidating. Most owners in the renta imputada situation end up paying a modest amount each year, calculated from a value that is usually far below the property's real worth. The part that actually causes problems is not the tax itself but the uncertainty around exact rates and filing dates in years of regulatory change, like the one Spain is currently going through with the 2026 filing window and the open question over the 1.1 percent rate. Treating both of those as things to actively check each year, rather than things you already know from last time, is the single most useful habit a non resident property owner in Spain can build.