Modelo 210: Non Resident Property Tax in Spain

Who has to file the Modelo 210

You file the Modelo 210 if you are not a tax resident in Spain but you own property here, or you earn certain income from a Spanish source. In practice this means anyone who spends fewer than 183 days a year in Spain and owns a holiday home, a rental flat, or land. Your NIE is the number Hacienda uses to track you, and a Spanish bank account makes paying far easier. If you live in Spain most of the year, you are a resident instead and you declare worldwide income through the ordinary IRPF return, not the Modelo 210.

Imputed income on a second home

Here is the part that catches people out. Even if you never rent your property and only use it for holidays, Spain treats it as producing a notional benefit and taxes you on it. This is called imputed income. You do not need to have earned a single euro for the bill to apply.

The taxable base is a small percentage of the valor catastral, the cadastral value the Catastro assigns to your property. The rate is 1.1 percent of that value if the cadastral value was reviewed within the last ten years, and 2 percent if it was not. You then apply the tax rate to that base.

• Residents of the EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein pay 19 percent on the imputed base.

• Residents of all other countries pay 24 percent.

A quick example. A second home with a valor catastral of 150,000 euros, reviewed recently, gives an imputed base of 1,650 euros, which is 1.1 percent. An owner resident in the EU pays 19 percent of that, around 313 euros for the year. The same property owned by someone resident outside the EU costs 24 percent, around 396 euros. The numbers are modest, but the filing obligation is real and Hacienda does notice when it is missing.

Rental income on the Modelo 210

If you actually rent the property out, you stop declaring imputed income for the period it is let and you declare the real rental income instead. The form is still the Modelo 210, but the rhythm changes. Rental income is declared on an accruals basis, and since 2024 the Agencia Tributaria allows an annual grouping for most cases, which has simplified what used to be a quarterly chore.

• EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein residents pay 19 percent and may deduct allowable expenses such as mortgage interest, the IBI, community fees, repairs and a share of depreciation, in proportion to the days let.

• Non EU residents pay 24 percent on the gross rent and may not deduct expenses, which makes the effective burden noticeably heavier.

That deduction gap is the single biggest reason your country of residence matters so much. Owning the same flat, an EU resident and a non EU resident can face very different bills on identical rent. If you also own the property, our guide to buying property in Spain sets out the wider tax picture.

Capital gains and the 3 percent retention

When a non resident sells a Spanish property, two things happen at once. You owe capital gains tax at 19 percent on the profit, the difference between the purchase and sale values after allowable costs. And the buyer is legally required to withhold 3 percent of the agreed price and pay it directly to Hacienda using the Modelo 211, as an advance against your gain.

That 3 percent retention is not an extra tax. It is a deposit. If your actual capital gains liability is lower than the amount withheld, you can reclaim the difference by filing a Modelo 210 within three months of the sale. If your gain is higher, you pay the balance. Many sellers leave the reclaim on the table simply because they did not know it was theirs to ask for.

Deadlines you need to know

The Modelo 210 does not follow a single neat date. The deadline depends on what you are declaring.

• Imputed income on a second home: the return for one calendar year is filed during the whole of the following calendar year, so the 2025 imputed income is due by 31 December 2026.

• Rental income, annual grouping: filed in the January following the year the rent was earned, with the first 20 days set aside for direct debit payment.

• Capital gains on a sale: within three months of the date of sale, counted from the one month the buyer has to pay the 3 percent retention.

Because these dates differ from the ordinary IRPF calendar and from the Modelo 720 reporting obligation, it is easy to miss one if you only think about Spanish tax once a year. Late filing brings surcharges, so a calendar reminder pays for itself.

The fiscal representative

A fiscal representative is a person or firm in Spain that acts as your point of contact with the tax authority. For most EU resident owners a representative is no longer compulsory, but many still appoint one because it gives Hacienda a Spanish address for notifications, which you would otherwise have to monitor from abroad. For residents of countries outside the EU and the EEA without a tax information exchange agreement, appointing a representative can be required.

Whether or not you use one, you will want a Spanish bank account so the tax can be paid or refunded cleanly, and you will want to keep your IBI receipts and cadastral references, since the Modelo 210 draws on exactly the same property data.