Modelo 210 explained: the Spanish non-resident tax every foreign property owner must file in 2026

There is a tax in Spain that almost nobody warns you about before you buy, that almost every foreign owner forgets at least once, and that the Spanish tax office (Agencia Tributaria, usually shortened to Hacienda) is increasingly good at collecting from anyone who tries to forget it forever.

It is called IRNR — Impuesto sobre la Renta de No Residentes — and you pay it by filing Modelo 210. If you are a foreign citizen who owns a property in Spain but does not live there 183 days a year, this form is your annual relationship with the Spanish state. It applies whether the property is rented, empty, used as a holiday home, lent to family, or sitting on the market for sale. The only way out of it is to sell up or move in.

This is the 2026 guide we wish every Buvivo client read the day they signed at the notary. It covers the two completely different versions of Modelo 210, the rate trap that costs Britons and Americans more than it costs Germans and French, the deadline calendar (which changed in 2024 and again in 2025), and the surcharge schedule when you file late — which, statistically, you eventually will.

What Modelo 210 actually is

Modelo 210 is the income-tax return for people and entities who earn Spanish-source income without being Spanish tax resident. It is the non-resident sibling of the well-known Modelo 100 (the resident income-tax return).

For foreign property owners, Modelo 210 is filed for one or both of two reasons:

1. Imputed income — Spain treats your second home as if it generated a small notional income just by existing, and taxes you on that. You owe this even if the property is empty all year.
2. Real rental income — if you let the property to anyone, short or long term, you owe tax on the actual rent received (minus, sometimes, the actual expenses).

You may owe one, the other, or both in the same year. They are filed on separate Modelo 210 returns.

Who has to file

You must file Modelo 210 if all four of these are true:

• You are not Spanish tax resident (you spend < 183 days a year in Spain and your "centre of economic interests" is not here).
• You own, alone or jointly, a property situated in Spain — house, flat, garage, storeroom, plot of land, or commercial unit.
• The property is for your own use (empty, holiday, family use) and/or rented out during the year.
• The year ended on 31 December.

Joint owners file one Modelo 210 each, for their share of the income. A couple owning 50/50 files two returns and pays half of the tax each.

If you sold the property during the year, you also have a separate capital-gains Modelo 210 to file within four months of the sale — covered in our non-resident seller guide.

Imputed income — the tax on doing nothing

This is the bit foreign owners struggle with the most: Spain charges you income tax on a notional rent even when the property is genuinely empty, used only by you twice a year, or being renovated.

The logic is that ownership of a habitable property is itself a benefit, and the tax code values that benefit at a percentage of the valor catastral — the administrative cadastral value of the property.

How the imputed amount is calculated

The notional income is:

• 1.1% of the valor catastral if the cadastral value has been revised within the last ten tax periods, or
• 2.0% of the valor catastral if it has not been revised in the last ten tax periods.

You then apply the IRNR rate (see next section) to that number, prorated for the number of days you owned the property during the year and that it was not let.

Worked example. A British owner has a flat in Alicante with a valor catastral of €92,000 (revised in 2019). The flat was empty all year.

• Imputed base: €92,000 × 1.1% = €1,012
• IRNR rate (non-EU since Brexit): 24%
• Tax due: €1,012 × 24% = €242.88

Same flat, same numbers, owned by a Dutch citizen (EU resident):

• Imputed base: €1,012
• IRNR rate: 19%
• Tax due: €192.28

Same flat, same numbers, but the cadastral value was last revised in 2002:

• Imputed base: €92,000 × 2.0% = €1,840
• Tax due (24%): €441.60

You can find your property's valor catastral on the most recent IBI bill from the town hall, or by logging into the Sede Electrónica del Catastro with a digital certificate.

When it's due

Imputed-income Modelo 210 for tax year 2025 is due between 1 January and 31 December 2026 — you have the whole following calendar year to file and pay. Most owners file in autumn and pay by direct debit.

Tax year 2026 will be filed between 1 January and 31 December 2027.

This is the only version of Modelo 210 with such a generous window. The rental version is much tighter.

Rental income — the harder return

If you let the property to anyone for any amount of time during the year — long-term tenant, summer holidaymakers, a friend who paid "something for the bills" — you owe IRNR on the actual rent received, prorated for the days the property was let.

The EU/EEA deduction trap

This is the single biggest rate trap in the entire Spanish tax system and the reason post-Brexit Britons quietly pay thousands more than they used to:

• EU/EEA residents (including Iceland and Norway since the 2014 reform) can deduct all property-related expenses that are attributable to the rental: mortgage interest, IBI, community fees, insurance, repairs, agency fees, utilities paid by the landlord, depreciation (3% of the construction value per year), and even the lawyer who drafted the rental contract.
• Non-EU/EEA residents (United Kingdom since 1 January 2021, United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, anywhere else) get no deductions whatsoever. You pay tax on the gross rent.

Combined with the higher headline rate (24% vs 19%), a non-EU landlord can pay two to three times the tax of an otherwise-identical EU landlord on the same property. This was one of the largest underreported Brexit costs and remains so in 2026.

Worked example

A French owner and a British owner each rent the same Málaga flat for €18,000 of long-term rent in 2025. The relevant expenses for the year:

• Mortgage interest: €4,800
• IBI: €450
• Community fees: €1,800
• Insurance: €380
• Repairs: €600
• Building-value depreciation (3%): €2,400
• Total deductible expenses: €10,430

For the French owner (EU resident, 19%):

• Taxable base: €18,000 − €10,430 = €7,570
• Tax due: €7,570 × 19% = €1,438.30

For the British owner (non-EU since 2021, 24%, no deductions):

• Taxable base: €18,000
• Tax due: €18,000 × 24% = €4,320.00

A €2,881.70 difference on the same property, the same rent, the same year. Multiplied across a decade of ownership, this is a Mediterranean cruise.

The European Commission has repeatedly criticised this regime as discriminatory under the free-movement-of-capital principle, but successive Spanish governments have left it in place. Britons hoping for a fix in 2026 should not hold their breath.

When it's due — and the 2024 change worth knowing

Until tax year 2023, rental income was filed quarterly. Four returns a year, due in the first 20 days of April, July, October and January. This was a paperwork nightmare for small landlords with a single Spanish flat.

From tax year 2024 onwards, the rules changed:

• You may still file quarterly if you prefer (and many gestores still do, by habit).
• Alternatively, you may file a single annual Modelo 210 between 1 January and 20 January of the following year, aggregating all rental income for the year.
• A new option introduced in late 2024 allows fully online filing of the annual return through the Sede Electrónica, with direct debit available until 15 January.

The annual route is almost always the right choice for a foreign landlord with one or two properties. It cuts your filings from four to one and lets you net any quarter where expenses outweighed income against quarters where they didn't — something the old quarterly regime forbade.

The catch: the annual deadline is 20 January, which is tight. The quarterly system gives you until 20 April of the following year to file Q4. If your gestor is slow, ask explicitly which return type they use for you.

How to file

There are four routes, in increasing order of independence:

1. Through your Spanish lawyer or gestor. Standard for most foreign owners. Costs €80–€180 per return (imputed) or €200–€450 per year for rental returns. The gestor needs your NIE, the valor catastral, the property reference (referencia catastral), and your Spanish bank IBAN for direct debit.
2. Through a specialist online service such as IberianTax, Spanish Tax Forms, NonResidentTax.es. €30–€90 per return. Good for owners with simple imputed-income returns who do not want to deal with the Agencia Tributaria portal themselves.
3. Yourself, with a digital certificate or Cl@ve. Free. The form lives at agenciatributaria.gob.es → Modelo 210. You will need either a Certificado Digital FNMT (requires a visit to a Spanish consulate or office) or a Cl@ve PIN. Allow two to three hours the first time you do it.
4. Yourself, with a paper predeclaración. Print the pre-filled form from the Agencia Tributaria portal, take it to a Spanish bank that handles tax payments (BBVA, Santander, CaixaBank, Sabadell), pay in cash or by transfer, then submit the stamped copy. Increasingly rare and not all banks still accept it.

For most foreign owners, route 1 or 2 is the right answer. The Agencia Tributaria portal is functional but uncompromising — error messages are in formal Spanish, the timeouts are short, and a wrong tick box can produce a Modelo 210 for the wrong tax period that is then very tedious to correct.

What you need before you file

Have ready:

• NIE number (the same one you used to buy — see our NIE guide if you have lost it).
• Passport number and country of residence.
• Referencia catastral — a 20-character code on every IBI bill, or lookup-able on the Catastro portal.
• Valor catastral — also on the IBI bill, broken into valor catastral del suelo (land) and valor catastral de la construcción (construction).
• Date of any cadastral revision — for the 1.1% vs 2.0% question.
• Acquisition date and ownership share if held jointly.
• For rentals: every rent receipt, every utility bill, mortgage interest certificate from your bank, community-fee certificate from the administrador de fincas, insurance policy, repair invoices with NIE/CIF of the supplier.
• Spanish bank IBAN for direct debit. Foreign IBANs are accepted in theory but cause delays — keep your Spanish current account open for this if nothing else.

Penalties if you don't file

The Agencia Tributaria has been running data-matches between the Land Registry, the Catastro, the IBI rolls and Modelo 210 filings since 2017. Forgetting Modelo 210 used to be near-invisible. It is now near-automatic.

The penalty schedule for late filing without prior request from the tax office (a recargo extemporáneo):

When you file late	Surcharge	Plus interest?
Within 3 months of deadline	5%	No
Within 6 months	10%	No
Within 12 months	15%	No
More than 12 months late	20%	Yes (current legal rate, ~4.06% in 2026)

If the tax office writes to you first — the requerimiento letter — the regime switches from surcharge to sanction, and the penalties become much steeper: 50% to 150% of the unpaid tax, plus interest, plus a separate fine for not declaring.

The statute of limitations is four years from the end of the year in which the return was due. After that, the unpaid year is barred. In practice, Hacienda very rarely lets a year run that close to expiry on a known foreign owner.

The five mistakes we see most often

1. "I don't rent it out, so I don't owe anything." No. Imputed income applies to empty homes. The first letter most non-filers get is for imputed years, not rental ones.
2. Filing one Modelo 210 for a couple. Each joint owner files separately for their share. Two NIEs, two returns, two payments.
3. Using the wrong tax year on the form. Spanish tax year = calendar year. The form has a período field that determines everything downstream. Filing 2025 income on a 2024 return creates a duplicate liability that is annoying to unwind.
4. Forgetting the post-Brexit rate change. British owners who set up direct debits with their gestor in 2018 are sometimes still paying 19% in 2026 because nobody updated the template. The gestor will not refund you for missing this — check your last return.
5. Closing the Spanish bank account. Without a Spanish IBAN, the direct debit option disappears and you must pay each return manually. Plenty of foreign owners close their account after the mortgage is paid off, then spend the next decade paying €25 in wire fees on every €240 of tax.

The 2026 outlook

Two changes to watch this year:

• The cadastral revision wave. Spain's ten-year cadastral revision cycle is hitting many coastal municipalities in 2025–2027. Properties that were on the 2.0% imputed rate are dropping to 1.1%, but on a higher valor catastral. Net effect varies — sometimes a small refund, sometimes a small increase.
• The European Commission case on EU/EEA deductions. A long-running infringement procedure is technically still open. If it ever forces a change, Britons could regain deduction rights despite being outside the EU — but the political appetite for that on the Spanish side is currently zero.

Should you hire a gestor or do it yourself?

A defensible rule of thumb:

• Empty holiday home, one owner, no rentals, simple cadastral value. Doing it yourself is fine after the first year. An online service for €40 is the easiest middle ground.
• Joint ownership, no rentals. Two returns a year, mechanical work. Online service is the sweet spot.
• Any rentals at all, especially short-term tourist lets. Use a gestor. The expense allocation, the deductibility tests, the depreciation calculation, the interaction with the tourist rental licence regime — none of this is worth saving €200 on.
• You also have a Spanish mortgage with an interest-only period, or you bought through a UK/US LLC, or you also receive Spanish dividends or pensions. Asesor fiscal, not a gestor. Different qualification, different price (€400–€900 a year), worth every euro.

What to do next

If you bought your Spanish property within the last 12 months and have not yet filed anything, start with the imputed-income return for the days you owned it last year. Even a partial-year return for 27 days of ownership is required, and starting clean is dramatically cheaper than catching up two years later.

If you have owned for years and never filed, do not panic — and do not assume the four-year statute has saved you. A voluntary catch-up filing under the surcharge regime (5–20%) is far better than the sanction regime (50–150%) that kicks in once Hacienda writes to you. A specialist will quote you a flat fee to bring everything current.

If you are about to buy and want this organised from day one, post your property brief on Buvivo and we will put you in touch with agents whose vendor packs already include the referencia catastral and valor catastral — the two numbers your future gestor will ask for first.

For the wider picture of every Spanish property tax — ITP, IVA, IBI, plusvalía — see our Spain property taxes explained guide. For the residency-side counterpart of Modelo 210, where you become Spanish tax resident and Modelo 720 / Modelo 100 take over, see the relevant nationality guide for Britons, Americans, or Germans.