Spanish non-resident tax: what it is and who pays it

The short answer

Spanish non-resident income tax charges income obtained in Spain by people who are not tax resident there. Its commonest case is not a salary and not rent but a flat that produces nothing: the law imputes an income of 2% of the cadastral value, or 1.1% where the town revised those values in the last ten tax years, and it is declared on form 210. The rate is 19% if you reside in the European Union or the European Economic Area and 24% in every other case².

Who is a taxpayer, and the trap in not having to file

The general duty is in article 28.1: anyone obtaining income in Spanish territory without a permanent establishment must declare it and pay whatever tax results. But paragraph 3 of the same article relieves them of it for income on which tax was already withheld or paid on account³.

That is why a great many non-residents with Spanish income file nothing and are right to: if their only income here is interest from a Spanish bank, the bank already withheld. And it also explains the trap, which is this tax's most forgotten obligation:

Imputed income from a property is paid to you by nobody, so nobody can withhold on it. It therefore falls outside the article 28.3 relief, and that is why article 4.3 of the form's Order names it expressly among the income that does require a return⁵.

It is the only obligation in the system you can breach without having received a penny. The same article 4.3 adds three further cases that also require a return: income excepted from withholding by article 10.3 of the regulation, income paid by someone who is not required to withhold, and transfers of property situated in Spain.

Imputed income: where the number comes from

Article 24.5 of the non-resident Act computes nothing of its own: it refers to the personal income tax rule, which is article 85.1 of Act 35/2006⁴. That rule says three things, and the second is the one most guides still get wrong.

1. 2% of the cadastral value of urban property not used in a business and not generating capital income, excluding the habitual residence and undeveloped land.
2. 1.1% where the town's cadastral values "have been revised, modified or determined by a general collective valuation procedure" that took effect "in the tax period or within the ten preceding tax periods"⁴.
3. Where at the accrual date the property has no cadastral value, or it has not been notified to the owner, the rate is 1.1% and applies to 50% of the greater of the value checked by the administration for other taxes and the acquisition price.

The income is apportioned by the days of ownership falling in each tax period and imputed to each owner in proportion to their share, and it accrues on 31 December of each year³.

Why the 1.1% expires on its own

The wording of point 2 is the one Act 26/2014 gave it. The previous one applied 1.1% to any revision after 1994 and never expired, and it is still circulating across half the internet. The current one measures a window that slides with the tax year you are declaring, so a 2016 cadastral revision serves tax years 2016 to 2026 and stops serving them in 2027.

The consequence is that the rate nearly doubles on its own, with the town hall doing nothing, the cadastral value not moving and no notification arriving. You can look up the year of your town's last valuation report on the Cadastre's electronic office.

Living outside the European Union costs twice over on the same income

Here are the two rules that move the most money in this tax, and the important thing is that they do not add up: they multiply.

• Article 25.1.a) taxes residents of another European Union member state, or of an EEA state with effective exchange of tax information, at 19%, and everyone else at 24%².
• Article 24.6 allows expenses directly related to the income obtained in Spain, with a direct and inseparable economic link to the activity, to be deducted only by those same residents. For the rest article 24.1 governs: the taxable base is the gross amount¹.

A higher rate, that is, applied to a larger base. On a letting of 12,000 euros a year with 4,000 euros of evidenced expenses:

The same income, the same flat, the same tenant: 1,360 euros of difference a year, which is 89% more tax. It is exactly what happened to British owners on 1 January 2021, and it took no Spanish tax reform at all.

It is worth knowing that the same border works in your favour elsewhere: article 14.1.c) exempts interest and capital gains on movable property obtained by residents of the European Union or the EEA, with exceptions for holdings in entities whose assets are mainly Spanish property⁹.

Form 210's four deadlines, and why the sign is one of them

Article 5 of Order EHA/3316/2010 gives not one deadline but four, and in three of them what decides is not the kind of income but the result of the return⁶:

Three details that are almost never told. The sale deadline is the only one that does not look at the sign: it applies "whatever the result of the return", so someone who sold at a loss and wants the 3% withholding back has the same four months rather than the four years everyone else gets. The nil-result deadline exists because a return with no amount is still compulsory where there is taxable income. And the four years for a refund are not counted from 1 February but "from the close of the period for declaring and paying over the withholding", which is the withholder's quarterly window, so the end date depends on the quarter of accrual and not only on the year.

What changed in June 2026, and whom it reaches

Order HAC/623/2026 of 12 June rewrote article 5 in two places⁷:

• Imputed income went from "the calendar year following the accrual date", which was the whole twelve months, to "from 1 April to 31 December of the following calendar year". The first quarter of the year was closed off.
• Lettings with tax payable moved to the first twenty calendar days of April of the following year, "both where declared separately and where grouped".

What makes this a calculation rather than a sentence is its single final provision, which applies each rule from a different accrual. The Spanish Tax Agency publishes a note with the same reading and adds the direct-debit windows⁸:

• Imputed income and grouped lettings: from 2026 accruals. Imputed income for 2025 therefore keeps the old deadline and can be filed until 31 December 2026, with direct debit until 23 December; income for 2026 cannot be filed before 1 April 2027.
• Lettings declared separately: only from accruals in the last quarter of 2026.

Which produces the situation nobody expects, and which is the reason this page exists: one flat let throughout 2026 and declared quarter by quarter is filed under two regimes in the same year. Accruals from January to September go to their quarterly windows of April, July and October 2026, and those in the fourth quarter, which under the earlier rule would have fallen due on 20 January 2027, jump to 20 April 2027. If the owner groups the whole year, all of 2026 goes to April 2027 at once.

A worked example with real numbers

It is the calculator's opening state. A flat with a cadastral value of 120,000 euros, in a town whose general valuation report took effect in 2016, owned by a resident of France who holds it all year and does not let it.

In tax year 2026 the revision is ten years old, so it is still inside the article 85.1 window: the imputed income is 1.1% of 120,000, that is 1,320 euros, and at the 19% of article 25.1.a) the tax is 250.80 euros. That accrual falls in 2026, so form 210 cannot be filed before 1 April 2027.

In tax year 2027 the revision turns eleven, the window closes and the rate goes back to 2%: the imputed income becomes 2,400 euros and the tax 456.00 euros. That is 81.8% more without the cadastral value having moved by a euro and without anyone having decided anything.

And if that same owner resided outside the European Union, the two figures would be 316.80 and 576.00 euros, because the rate goes from 19% to 24%.

The sale, and the 3% that is not the tax

Where a non-resident sells a property situated in Spain, article 25.2 requires the buyer to withhold and pay over 3% of the agreed consideration, on form 211, as a payment on account of the seller's tax². That payment on account is not required where the property is contributed to the incorporation or capital increase of a company resident in Spain.

That 3% is not the tax. The capital gain is taxed at 19% under article 25.1.f), worked out under the personal income tax rules, so the withholding may fall short or be more than enough, and in both cases the seller files their own form 210 to settle the difference or claim the refund. And there is a little-known incentive for the buyer not to be careless: where the withholding or payment on account is not paid over, the property transferred stands as security for the lower of the two amounts, the withholding and the tax.

What this tax is not

It is worth separating from three things it is often confused with.

It is not the IBI. The IBI is a municipal tax paid for being the owner of the property, and its base is also the cadastral value, but they are different taxes, from different administrations, with different bills. A non-resident with a Spanish flat pays both every year.

It is not wealth tax, which charges the value of a set of assets rather than an income, and which has its own exempt threshold and its own return.

It is not non-resident tax with a permanent establishment. Chapter III of the Act governs a wholly different regime, close to corporation tax, with income set off against income, payments on account and its own form. What this page describes is chapter IV: without a permanent establishment, where each item of income is taxed separately and they are never set off against each other, not even inside a single grouped return⁵.

A little-used way out: being taxed as a resident

Article 46 offers individuals resident in the European Union, or in an EEA state with effective exchange of information, the option of being taxed as personal income tax payers, in two cases: that they obtained at least 75% of their entire income in Spain from employment and business activities, or that their Spanish income was below 90% of the personal and family allowance they would have been entitled to as residents, with the income obtained outside Spain also below that figure⁹.

Whoever elects is taxed at the average personal income tax rate on their Spanish income as a whole, with their personal and family circumstances counted, and does not lose their status as a non-resident taxpayer. It does not apply to residents of countries or territories classed as tax havens, and it must be applied for expressly. For a pensioner or a cross-border worker with nearly all their income in Spain, the difference can be large.

The symmetry runs the other way too, and that direction is rather better known: article 93 of the personal income tax Act lets somebody who acquires Spanish tax residence through a work posting work out their bill under this tax's rules for six tax years, without ceasing to be a personal income tax payer. That is the Beckham law, and form 151 is its annual return.

What to check before you file

Three checks the calculator settles, worth making in this order. First, which of article 5's four rules applies to you, because that decides even whether you can file today or not yet. Second, the year of your town's last cadastral revision, because it decides whether you pay 1.1% or 2% and because that window expires. And third, your tax residence for article 25.1.a), which decides both the rate and whether you can deduct expenses: it is the only one of the three that appears on no document about the property.