Modelo 210: The Spanish Tax Nobody Mentions at the Notary
Expatronus Team27 August 20268 min read
If you own property in Spain but do not live there, one form follows you every year. Modelo 210 does three completely different jobs, and the one that catches people out is the bill on a home that earns nothing at all.
The keys are handed over, the notary shakes your hand, and everyone is pleased. What tends not to come up in that room is that from the next 1 January, Spain expects an annual tax return from you, in your own name, whether or not the property earns a single euro.
That return is Modelo 210, the self assessment for Impuesto sobre la Renta de no Residentes, Spain's non resident income tax. It is one form doing three quite different jobs, and most owners only discover the first one years late.
One form, three situations
Modelo 210 is filed by people who are not Spanish tax residents but who have Spanish source income, and who have no permanent establishment here. For property owners that covers three cases: a home you keep for yourself, a home you let out, and a home you sell. The rates, the deadlines and the arithmetic are different in each.
💡Being a non resident is a factual test, not a choice. In broad terms it turns on where you spend the year and where your economic interests sit. If you are unsure which side of the line you fall on, that is the question to settle before anything else, because it changes which tax system applies to you entirely.
Job one: the tax on a home that earns nothing
This is the one that surprises people. If you own an urban property in Spain that you keep for your own use, Spain treats it as producing a notional income anyway. It is called renta imputada, imputed income, and it is taxed even though no money changed hands.
The base is a percentage of the valor catastral, the cadastral value, which appears on your IBI bill from the town hall and is usually well below market value:
- 1.1% of the cadastral value where that value was revised under a collective valuation procedure that took effect in the tax period or in the ten preceding tax periods
- 2% of the cadastral value where it was not
- Where no cadastral value has been notified, the base is generally 50% of the higher of the purchase price or the value verified by the tax administration, and the 1.1% rate applies
That figure is then taxed at your non resident rate, and it is prorated for the days in the year you actually owned the place. A worked example: on a flat with a cadastral value of 120,000 euros that was recently revised, the imputed income is 1,320 euros for the year. An owner resident in the EU pays 19% of that, so around 251 euros. An owner resident outside the EEA pays 24%, so around 317 euros.
⚠️Nobody sends you a bill for this. There is no annual demand the way there is for IBI, and the tax agency does not chase small amounts quickly. Owners routinely find out after five or six years, when the arrears, interest and penalties have quietly compounded into something much larger than the tax itself.
Job two: rental income
Let the place out, whether long term or to holidaymakers, and the imputed income stops for the days it is rented. What replaces it is real income, taxed on what the property actually earned.
Here the residence test does more work than anywhere else in this tax, and the gap is wide:
- Owners resident in the EU, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein are taxed at 19%, and may generally deduct expenses genuinely linked to the Spanish rental: IBI, community fees, insurance, repairs, mortgage interest, depreciation
- Owners resident elsewhere, which since Brexit includes the United Kingdom, and also covers the United States and Canada, are taxed at 24% on the gross rent, with those deductions generally unavailable
That is not a small difference. On the same flat, letting for the same rent, two owners can face materially different bills purely because of where they file their own taxes. It is worth modelling before you buy, not after.
The deadlines, and the change now working through them
Imputed income has traditionally been declared in the calendar year following the one it relates to, with the deadline falling at the end of that year. Rental income used to mean four quarterly returns; since the 2024 tax year non resident landlords have instead grouped the whole year into a single annual filing in the first twenty days of January.
That is now being reworked. The tax agency's own guidance for Modelo 210 flags Order HAC/623/2026, which amends the filing deadlines for both imputed income from urban property and income from let or sublet property, and changes the data the form asks for. Published guidance has not fully caught up with it, and secondary sources still show the older windows.
✅Because that reform is live, confirm the filing window for the specific year you are declaring against the tax agency's current instructions rather than against an article, this one included. The rates and the arithmetic below are stable. The dates are the part in motion.
Job three: selling, and the 3% that leaves without you
When a non resident sells Spanish property, the buyer generally withholds 3% of the agreed price and pays it directly to the tax agency using Modelo 211, typically within a month of completion. You receive the price less that 3%.
It is not a tax in itself. It is an advance payment against the capital gains tax on the sale, which for non residents is generally charged at 19%. The reckoning happens afterwards, on Modelo 210 again, and the window is short:
- Completion happens and the buyer withholds 3% of the price
- The buyer pays that over on Modelo 211, generally within one month
- You have four months from the sale to file Modelo 210 declaring the actual gain
- If the real tax is lower than the 3% withheld, you claim the difference back, and refunds commonly take several months
- If it is higher, you pay the balance with that filing
⚠️Miss the four month window and the 3% already withheld is effectively lost to you, while any balance still owing remains payable. Selling at a loss does not make the filing optional: a loss is precisely the situation in which the whole 3% is likely refundable, and only the filing recovers it.
If you own it jointly
The tax is personal, so joint owners do not file one return between them. Each owner normally files for their own share of the property, at their own rate, according to where they are resident. A couple owning fifty fifty typically means two returns every year rather than one, and if they are resident in different countries the two returns may not even carry the same rate.
What this actually costs to get wrong
The individual sums here are small, which is exactly why the problem grows. A few hundred euros a year attracts little attention until the property is sold, at which point the buyer's lawyer looks at the file, the unfiled years surface, and the arrears have to be settled out of the sale proceeds under time pressure. The tax was never the difficulty. The eight years of it, discovered in the fortnight before completion, is.
None of this is complicated once it is set up. It is an annual task with a known shape, and the arithmetic rarely changes from one year to the next. The failure is almost always that nobody told the owner it existed.
The short version
- Own it and keep it empty: imputed income on 1.1% or 2% of the cadastral value, once a year
- Let it out: 19% with expenses deductible for EU and EEA residents, 24% on gross for everyone else
- Sell it: the buyer withholds 3%, and you have four months to file and settle up
- Own it jointly: one return per owner, per year
- Check the current filing window against the tax agency rather than an article, while Order HAC/623/2026 works through
If you own a place in Spain and have never filed a Modelo 210, the useful next step is finding out how many years are open and what it takes to regularise them, which is usually cheaper and calmer than it sounds when done deliberately rather than at a completion deadline. You can start a free assessment and we will match you with an advisor who files these routinely.
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Disclaimer: The information in this article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Laws and regulations change frequently — always verify with official sources and consult a qualified professional before making any decisions. Contact our specialists or start your free assessment for personalised guidance.
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