Non-resident tax in Spain: which taxes you pay and when

Resident or non-resident: the question that settles everything else

Before looking at any tax you have to answer one question, because it does not change a percentage: it changes the whole tax. If you have your habitual residence in Spain you are an IRPF taxpayer (article 8.1.a of Law 35/2006, the Spanish income tax law) and you are taxed on your worldwide income. If you do not, you are taxed under the IRNR, the income tax for non-residents, whose article 1, in the consolidated text approved by Royal Legislative Decree 5/2004, taxes "the income obtained in Spanish territory by individuals and entities that do not reside there". What you earn abroad stays out.

The IRNR Law does not even define residence: its article 6 borrows it from article 9 of the IRPF Law. That article opens three doors, and crossing one is enough:

• More than 183 days of the calendar year in Spanish territory. And sporadic absences are added in, unless you prove your tax residence in another country, which is proved with a certificado de residencia fiscal, a tax residence certificate from the foreign authority, not with boarding passes.
• The main core or the base of your activities or economic interests, directly or indirectly (article 9.1.b). You can spend a hundred days here and be resident through this door.
• The family presumption: if your spouse, not legally separated, and your dependent minor children habitually live in Spain, you are presumed to live here too, unless you prove otherwise.

Three things that settle nothing, however often they come up: your passport, the padrón (the town hall population register) and owning a property here. Nor does having a NIE.

The answer matters more than it looks. A resident declares worldwide income and carries reporting duties a non-resident does not have, starting with the modelo 720 on assets held abroad. A non-resident only declares Spanish income, but declares it with no personal allowance and almost no deductions. The three tests one by one, the five-year quarantine of article 8.2 for Spanish nationals who move to a tax haven, and the treaty tie-breaker cascade when two countries claim you at once are in the guide on tax residence in Spain. Come back here once you know which side you are on: the rest of this page assumes you are a non-resident.

Which taxes apply, depending on what you own in Spain

There is no single foreigner's tax in Spain: there are several, and which ones reach you depends on what you own and what you do with it. This table is the map, and each row drops you where it is explained.

Two warnings before the detail. First: nobody posts you a bill for the IRNR. Article 28.1 requires taxpayers without a permanent establishment to file a return "working out and paying the tax due", so the tax is self-assessed and silence from the tax office does not mean you are up to date.

Second: these cases live together. The same flat can be let for half the year and at your disposal for the rest, and then it produces two different kinds of income and two different returns, because article 85.1 of the IRPF Law only excludes from imputation property that generates capital income. And if the property came to you by inheritance or gift, the Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones (inheritance and gift tax) comes in as well, and its rules set the values you will use later if you sell (article 36 of the IRPF Law).

If you own a home and do not let it out: imputed income

This is the mass case and the one most owners have never heard of: the law presumes that an urban property at your disposal produces income even though you charge nothing for it. Article 13.1.h) of the IRNR Law taxes "income imputed to individual taxpayers who own urban property located in Spanish territory not assigned to an economic activity". An empty flat, a holiday home, a garage you use two weeks a year: all of them impute. Rural property does not.

How much is imputed is set by article 85.1 of the IRPF Law, reached through a chain of three links (article 24.5 of the IRNR Law, article 87 of the 2004 consolidated income tax text and the seventeenth additional provision of Law 35/2006):

• 2% of the cadastral value as the general rule, in proportion to the days involved.
• 1.1% if the municipality's cadastral values were revised through a general collective valuation procedure that took effect in the tax period or in the ten preceding ones.
• 1.1% of 50% of the higher of the value checked by the Administration and the acquisition price or value, if the property has no cadastral value or it has not been notified to you.

On that taxable base you apply the rate in article 25.1.a): 19% if you live in the European Union or in an EEA State with an effective exchange of tax information, 24% everywhere else. And nothing is deducted: the base is taken in full and with no reductions (article 24.1), and only donations and withholdings come off the tax due (article 26). The IBI is not deductible here.

A worked example. A flat with a cadastral value of 90,000 euros in a municipality revised in 2019, owned 50/50 by a married couple resident in Germany, empty for the whole of 2025. Imputed income is 90,000 × 1.1% = 990 euros, 495 per spouse, and at 19% that is 94.05 euros per return: 188.10 euros for the couple. With no revision inside those ten years the percentage would be 2% and the tax 171 euros per spouse. Living outside the European Union, at 24%, each of them would pay 118.80 euros.

Three rules multiply the paperwork, and almost nobody mentions them in advance: imputed income accrues on 31 December each year (article 27.1.c of the IRNR Law), it is pro-rated by days if the property was not yours all year, and you file one return per property, per co-owner and per tax year, because this income cannot be grouped (article 2.1.b of Order EHA/3316/2010) and each co-owner declares their own ownership share (article 85.2, which refers to article 11.3 of the IRPF Law). A married couple with a home, a garage and a storage room with separate cadastral references files six returns a year. The full calculation, with the exclusions in article 85.1 and the small print of the percentage, is in the modelo 210 guide.

If you let it out: how rent is taxed and how often

Rent is a different kind of income and it runs on a different clock. Article 13.1.g) taxes income derived, directly or indirectly, from property located in Spain, and article 27.1.a) places the accrual "when it falls due, or on the date of collection if that is earlier": every rent instalment due is an accrual. Article 15.1 finishes the thought by forbidding any offsetting between them, whether between months or between properties.

The base is the gross rent, without the reductions of Spanish resident income tax (article 24.1). The residential letting reduction of article 23.2 of the IRPF Law never applies to a non-resident, not even an EU one. The only thing you can subtract is expenses, and only if you live in the European Union or in the EEA with an effective exchange of information (article 24.6): IBI, service charges, insurance, interest, repairs and maintenance, and depreciation of 3% a year on the higher of acquisition cost and cadastral value, excluding the land.

That border is what really moves money. The same flat, let for 1,000 euros a month all year:

Same tenant, same rent, more than three times the tax. And only part of that gap comes from the rate: most of it comes from the base.

Then there is the detail almost nobody declares: the months the flat is not let do not vanish. The days it was at your disposal impute income separately, with their own income type code and their own deadline, so letting for half a year does not produce half a return: it produces two. The expenses one by one, what can be grouped in a single return and where holiday letting stops fitting in this regime are in the guide on renting out a property as a non-resident.

If you sell: the 3% withholding and the capital gain

In a sale made by a non-resident there are three separate payments, with three recipients and three calendars. Mixing them up causes most of the nasty surprises.

The 3% withholding is not the tax. It is worked out on the price; the tax is worked out on the gain, that is, on the difference between the transfer value and the acquisition value, which are built from paperwork (articles 35.1 and 35.2 of the IRPF Law, applied to non-residents by article 24.4 of the IRNR Law) and are not copied from the deed. With a small gain, or a loss, too much has been withheld, and that refund does not arrive on its own: you claim it by filing the self-assessment, and the right lapses after four years (article 66 of the General Tax Law).

Two more warnings. There is a reinvestment relief for a main home (seventh additional provision of the IRNR Law), but it only reaches residents of the European Union or of the EEA with effective exchange, and it does not even avoid the withholding or the duty to file. And the year of the sale still generates imputed income for the days the property was yours: one more return, with its own deadline. How the two values are built, the pre-1995 taper coefficients and the paperwork to gather before signing are in the guide on selling a property as a non-resident.

If you have a company or an economic activity in Spain

Here the guide changes ground, and it is worth saying so plainly. Everything above is the regime of someone who obtains income without a permanent establishment, the one taxed "separately on each total or partial accrual of income subject to tax" under article 15.1 of the IRNR Law and declared with modelo 210. Three situations fall outside that frame.

• The owner of the property is a Spanish company. A sociedad limitada incorporated in Spain is resident and pays corporate income tax, not IRNR. On top of that, the imputed income of article 13.1.h) reaches only "individuals" as owners, so that route does not apply to it. The rates in Law 27/2014 are 25% as a general rule, 15% for newly created entities in the first period with a positive base and the following one, and a reduced scale for companies with turnover below one million euros, which in 2026 is 19% up to 50,000 euros of base and 21% on the rest. The guide on corporate income tax in the first year covers it in full, and the whole map of the company obligations, year by year, is in the SL tax guide. If you are also the one running the company from outside Spain, what changes (withholding, NIE, representative, effective management) is in the non-resident director guide.
• You operate through a permanent establishment. The tax, the form and the calendar all change, and article 10.1 of the IRNR Law requires you to appoint a tax representative resident in Spain. There is a further front: IRNR taxpayers with a permanent establishment must use compliant invoicing systems before 1 July 2027 (Royal Decree-Law 15/2025), which is what the Verifactu guide explains.
• You are on the border. Having someone employed full time in Spain to manage the letting, or providing services typical of the hotel industry on top of granting use, can take you out of the no permanent establishment regime. That border is not settled by any of the articles quoted in this guide: it is decided case by case.

With the same honesty as the rest of the page: if you recognise yourself in any of those three, get professional advice in Spain before filing anything. What the kontora service covers is the imputed income of a property at your disposal, not companies and not permanent establishments.

The NIE, the tax representative and how to pay from abroad

Three things treated as compulsory in forums and neighbour conversations, and they are not.

You do not need a NIE in order to comply. Article 14 of Order EHA/3316/2010 governs the predeclaración, the pre-filing route: you complete the form on the sede electrónica, the AEAT's official site for procedures, you get the payment document and you pay it, with no digital certificate and no Cl@ve. If you have no Spanish NIF, the form itself issues a Código Identificativo (article 14.1.º.b) that identifies that return. Cl@ve, by contrast, does require a Spanish NIF, so it is rarely the route for someone living abroad.

A tax representative is not compulsory by default. Article 10.1 only requires one if you operate through a permanent establishment, in the cases of its articles 24.2 and 38, if you reside in a territory with no effective exchange of information, or when the AEAT demands it. That last limb expressly names owning a property in Spanish territory as a reason, so a demand can arrive: if it does, the appointment is notified within two months and failing to attend to it is a serious infringement of 2,000 euros, or 6,000 if you live in a territory with no effective exchange (article 10.4).

A Spanish bank account is not needed either. Quite the opposite: if you pay by transfer and it leaves a bank that collaborates with the AEAT, meaning a Spanish bank, it is rejected.

There are two ways to pay from abroad. The first is the transfer, with four traps that all have a tax consequence: the payment identifier expires after 30 calendar days, the reference must carry only that identifier, the transfer has to leave your bank outside Spain, and the filing date is set by the credit to the restricted account, not by the instruction you give. The second is direct debit: since 1 February 2024, Order HFP/387/2023 accepts a direct debit on an account at a non-collaborating institution in the SEPA area, 36 countries that include the United Kingdom and Switzerland, but it requires online filing within the first part of the window. The step by step, with the screens and the exact order, is in the guide on how to pay modelo 210 from abroad.

Calendar and deadlines: what is filed and when

The IRNR Law sets no deadline at all: its article 28.1 says the return is filed "in the manner, place and time limits laid down", and the ones that lay them down are the ministerial orders governing the form. Order HAC/623/2026, published in the BOE of 23 June 2026, reordered the form and the deadlines at the same time.

Two axes not to mix up. The new form governs every self-assessment filed from 1 January 2027, whichever year you are declaring; the new deadlines, in contrast, govern by accrual. Translated: imputed income for 2025 filed in November 2026 goes on the previous form; that same income filed in 2027 would go on the new form, and would already be late.

The deadline depends on the result, not only on the type of income: the same fact falls due in April if there is tax to pay and in January if the result is zero. You do the numbers first and look at the calendar afterwards, never the other way round. And if you are going to pay by direct debit, remember there are three different dates: the filing deadline, the direct debit deadline, which is shorter, and the date the money leaves your account, which is not a deadline for anything.

The date that matters today: if your property was empty or for your own use in 2025, that imputed income falls due on 31 December 2026. That window is open right now.

Common mistakes and what happens if you miss a deadline

The mistakes that repeat most are not arithmetic, they are map mistakes:

• Thinking an empty flat declares nothing. It is precisely because it is empty that it generates imputed income, every year and with no minimum threshold.
• Imputing the whole year on a flat let for six months. You over-declare and no screen anywhere returns an error.
• Each spouse declaring the house at 100%. That pays twice the real tax, with two payments made, and nobody warns you: the declared ownership shares have to add up to 100%.
• Assuming the 19%. The United Kingdom stopped being a Member State in 2021, Switzerland has never been part of the European Economic Area and the rest of the world is at 24%. Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, on the other hand, do get 19% without being in the European Union.
• Believing the double taxation treaty gets you out of it. Treaties drafted along the OECD model say that income from immovable property "may be taxed" in the State where the property is located, and they extend the rule to direct use, which is exactly the empty flat.
• Taking the 3% withholding for the final tax and never claiming the excess back, a right that lapses after four years.
• Ordering the transfer on 30 December. The date that counts is the credit to the restricted account, not your instruction.

And if you have missed a deadline, the way out is defined, and who moves first decides the price. If you file on your own initiative, before anyone asks you to, what applies is the recargo por declaración extemporánea, the late filing surcharge, in article 27.2 of the General Tax Law: 1% plus another 1% for each full month of delay, or 15% plus late payment interest past 12 months, with a 25% reduction if you pay all the rest on time (article 27.5). There is no penalty on this route. If the requerimiento, the formal demand, arrives before your return, the route of the tax penalty opens instead. Only the last four years can be demanded (article 66.a) and each year goes on its own return (article 27.4). You can estimate the cost year by year with the late filing surcharge calculator, and see what our service covers today on the modelo 210 page and on pricing.

File your own modelo 210 for €19.95 + IVA. kontora works out the tax and prepares the completed form; you do the filing. How it works · tell me when it opens.

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