Imputed income: the Spanish tax on a home you do not rent out
It does not apply to your main residence, and it applies only to the days a property was not let.
What is actually being taxed
The law assumes a second home produces a benefit to its owner, and puts a figure on that benefit. The figure is a percentage of the valor catastral, the administrative value on your IBI receipt, not a percentage of anything you received.
That percentage is lower where the municipality has revised its cadastral values recently and higher where it has not. Your IBI receipt tells you which applies.
| Cadastral values | Applied to valor catastral |
|---|---|
| Revised recently | 1.1% |
| Not revised | 2% |
The resulting figure is then taxed at your own rate. Which line applies is on your IBI receipt.
Whatever comes out is then taxed at your rate: the non-resident rate for a non-resident, your marginal rate as part of the annual return for a resident.
Why it surprises people
It is invisible until it is not. There is no invoice, no withholding and no reminder. Many owners of a holiday flat discover it years later, with the surcharges that come from filing late.
It is also charged on a property that stood empty because you could not let it, or were renovating, or simply did not want to. Intent is irrelevant.
Getting the base right matters
The valor catastral is on the IBI receipt. If you do not have it, any estimate has to be built from something else, and every substitute overstates it, so the tax comes out higher than the real figure.
Finding the receipt is usually the single highest-value five minutes in the whole calculation.
When it is filed
Non-residents file it on Modelo 210, with a window from 1 April to 31 December of the following year. Residents include it in the annual Modelo 100.
If the property was let for part of the year, the let days are taxed as rental income and the remaining days as imputed income. Both are declared.
Common questions
- I never rent it out. Do I really have to file?
- Yes. The obligation follows from owning a second property in Spain, not from earning anything from it.
- Does it apply to my main home?
- No. A habitual residence is excluded. It applies to second homes, holiday flats and any property beyond the one you live in.
- What if I do not know the valor catastral?
- It is on the IBI receipt. Without it the figure has to be approximated from other values, and those approximations run high, so it is worth finding.
- Is it a lot?
- It is usually modest per year, but it compounds. Several undeclared years plus surcharges is a considerably worse conversation than the tax itself.
Estimate for orientation only - not tax, legal or financial advice. Figures are computed from versioned, dated reference rates and may be incomplete or out of date. Confirm with your gestor / asesor fiscal.