Non-Resident Property Tax in Spain: What You Pay Every Year (2026)
Owning a home in Spain while living abroad comes with a small, predictable set of taxes, and this guide explains them in one place. The non resident property tax Spain charges an owner in this position is really two bills a year: one from the town hall for the building, one from the tax office for what the building is deemed to earn you, whether or not it earns anything at all.
The filing calendar for the second bill changed in June 2026, and this guide uses the new dates. There is also a rule that works in favour of anyone buying a new development off-plan: no imputed income tax while the home is being built. We moved to Estepona from Germany ourselves, and I look after every buyer personally, so what follows is written from the buyer's side of the table, with worked examples and the clear filing dates you can apply directly to your own home in Spain.
What a non-resident owner pays, in one table
Before any detail, here is the whole picture. Most owners who never let their home deal with exactly two lines of this table every year. Everything else happens only when you let, or when you sell.
| Tax | Who charges it | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| IBI, municipal property tax | Town hall | Every year, every owner |
| Imputed income tax, Modelo 210 | Agencia Tributaria | Every year the home is not let |
| Tax on rental income, Modelo 210 | Agencia Tributaria | Only for periods the home is let |
| Capital gains tax, Modelo 210 | Agencia Tributaria | Once, when you sell |
| Plusvalía municipal | Town hall | Once, when you sell |
The first thing to notice is that residence status decides which authority you deal with. IBI is charged on the property, so it falls on everyone equally. The income tax lines are charged on the person, and a non-resident files them on a different form, at different rates, from someone who lives here. Holding an NIE number does not change which side of that line you are on; where you actually live does. Our guide to the NIE number in Spain covers that distinction.
IBI: the town hall's part of the non-resident property tax in Spain
IBI, Impuesto sobre Bienes Inmuebles, is the Spanish equivalent of council tax or property tax. It is levied by the municipality on the owner of record at 1 January, calculated on the cadastral value, and it is billed once a year whether you live here, let the property, or use it for holidays. For a typical apartment it is a modest annual bill, and in Estepona it has been falling for several years. Set up a direct debit from your Spanish account and the town hall collects it automatically each year, so you never need to think about deadlines or letters from Spain while you are at home abroad.
How IBI is calculated
The formula is short: cadastral value multiplied by the municipal rate. The law sets the range for urban property at a minimum of 0.4% and a maximum of 1.10% of the cadastral value, under Article 72 of the Local Finance Act, and each town hall fixes its own rate inside that band by local ordinance.
The cadastral value is not the price you paid. It is an administrative value set by the Catastro, the land registry's valuation arm, and for most homes on this coast it sits well below market value. You will find it printed on the IBI receipt, and it is the single most useful number in this whole article, because both of your annual taxes are calculated from it.
What Estepona does differently
Estepona has been cutting its IBI bill for several years. According to the town's 2026 budget, the average IBI receipt has fallen from €723 in 2011 to €556 in 2026, and more than €6.6 million has been set aside for IBI reductions this year. There is also an extra 3% off for paying by direct debit in the voluntary period, a small saving that repeats every single year.
The detail that matters for a non-resident is who the reduction is for. It is applied automatically to people registered on the town's padrón, the municipal register of residents. An owner who lives abroad and is not registered here should not expect to see it on their bill. That is a genuine difference between buying as a future resident and buying as a holiday owner, and it is worth knowing before you compare what neighbours tell you they pay.
Refuse collection and community fees
Two further charges arrive alongside IBI and are easy to confuse with it. The refuse collection charge, the tasa de basura, is a separate municipal fee billed by the town hall or its collection service, usually once a year. It is modest, but it has its own receipt and its own direct debit, and owners who set up only one of the two sometimes discover the other in arrears.
Community fees are not a tax at all. They are what you pay the owners' association of your building or development for shared costs: cleaning, gardens, pools, lifts, insurance, security. On a resort-style scheme they can easily exceed IBI and imputed income tax combined, which is why they belong in any honest comparison of running costs, even though the tax office never sees them.
Imputed income: the tax on a home you do not let
This is the part of the non-resident property tax in Spain that is specific to Spain. If you own a home in Spain, you do not live in it, and you do not let it, Spanish law treats the property as producing a notional income for you, and taxes that income. It is called renta imputada, imputed income, and a non-resident declares it every year on Modelo 210.
The logic is that the home is at your disposal, and a home at your disposal has a use value even when you are not using it. You may disagree with the logic. Every non-resident owner in Spain pays it anyway.
2% or 1.1% of the cadastral value
Article 85 of the Personal Income Tax Act sets the imputed income at 2% of the cadastral value. The figure drops to 1.1% if the cadastral values in that municipality were revised through a general collective valuation that came into force in the current tax year or the ten before it. It is also prorated by days, so a property you bought in July carries roughly half a year's imputation in its first year.
For Estepona, the most recent valuation procedure listed by the Catastro is a partial revaluation announced in October 2019, not a general one. For most properties in the municipality that means the 2% rate is the one to expect. We say "most" deliberately: whether your specific property's value came from a general revision within the last decade is something your IBI receipt or a cadastral certificate settles, and it is worth checking once rather than assuming.
The rate that applies to you
Once you have the imputed income, the tax rate depends on where you live. Under Article 25 of the Non-Resident Income Tax Act, the general rate is 24%. Residents of another EU member state, or of an EEA country with an effective exchange of tax information, pay 19%. Since Brexit, owners resident in the UK pay the general 24%, as do owners resident in the US.
A worked example, with the assumptions stated
Cadastral values are individual to each property, so there is no honest "typical" figure. What follows uses an assumed cadastral value of €150,000, purely to show the arithmetic. Replace it with the figure on your own IBI receipt.
Two things stand out. First, the rate difference between 2% and 1.1% matters more than the tax rate: it nearly halves the bill, which is why the revaluation question in the previous section deserves five minutes of your time. Second, these are modest sums for most homes. Owners who ignore them are not usually avoiding a large bill; they are accumulating a surcharge on a small one.
Buying off-plan: no imputed income while it is being built
Here is the rule that almost nobody mentions, and for buyers of new developments it is the single most useful sentence in Spanish income tax law. Article 85 of the Personal Income Tax Act, the same article that sets the 2% and 1.1% rates, ends with this: for properties under construction, and where planning rules mean the property cannot be used, no income is imputed at all.
In practice that means an off-plan buyer owes no imputed income tax for the months or years between signing and completion. The obligation starts when the home is finished and becomes yours. On a construction period of eighteen months to two years, that is not a large sum saved, but it is a line you should not be paying and that some owners pay by mistake, because a general guide told them every owner files every year.
It is one of several quiet advantages of buying new here, alongside a ten-year structural warranty and stage payments secured by a bank guarantee. On our own survey of 18 September 2026, new developments in the municipality of Estepona were asking €5,145 per square metre, just 2.9% above the resale index of €5,000 for August 2026. That narrow premium is set out in our note on new build against resale prices, and it is why so many buyers here choose new in the first place.
New developments in Estepona
The Modelo 210 deadlines changed in June 2026
This is where most published advice is now out of date. Order HAC/623/2026, published in the Official State Gazette on 23 June 2026, moved the filing windows for both imputed income and rental income. The Agencia Tributaria has published a note confirming the new dates.
| What you declare | New filing window | Applies from |
|---|---|---|
| Imputed income, home not let | 1 April to 31 December of the following year | Tax year 2026, so first window opens 1 April 2027 |
| Rental income, grouped annual return | First 20 calendar days of April of the following year | Rental income earned in 2026 |
| Direct debit, imputed income | 1 April to 23 December | Tax year 2026 |
| Direct debit, rental income | 1 to 15 April | Rental income earned in 2026 |
Two consequences are worth spelling out. For imputed income, the window used to open on 1 January; it now opens on 1 April. For rental income, the grouping period has moved from quarterly to annual, so an owner who lets their home through the year now files once, in April, instead of four times.
The third consequence is the one people trip over. The 2025 tax year still runs on the old calendar. If you owned a Spanish home in 2025 and did not let it, your imputed income return for 2025 is due by 31 December 2026, and the window opened on 1 January 2026. The new dates apply from the 2026 tax year onwards.
The form itself has also changed. It now includes a field for the number of days the property was at your disposal or let, and a field for your percentage of ownership, which makes it easier to declare a part year or a shared property correctly.
If you let the property: tax on rental income
The moment you let your home, the imputed income stops for the days it is let, and tax on the actual rental income takes its place. You declare it on the same Modelo 210, and from 2026 onwards you do so once a year.
Why EU and non-EU owners are taxed so differently
This is the section where the gap between owners becomes real money. Under Article 24 of the Non-Resident Income Tax Act, the general rule is that non-residents are taxed on the gross amount, with no deductions. Only owners resident in the EU or the EEA may deduct the expenses directly related to letting the property, such as community fees, IBI, insurance, repairs and the agency's commission, and they pay 19% on what remains.
An owner resident in the UK or the US pays 24% on every euro of rent received, with nothing taken off first. On a long-term let at the Estepona average of €21 per square metre a month in August 2026, a 100 m² apartment brings in about €25,200 a year gross. At 24% of gross, that is €6,048 in Spanish tax before a single cost has been paid. An EU-resident owner with the same apartment would pay 19% on the net figure after costs, which is a materially smaller sum.
None of this makes letting a bad idea. The gross yield in Estepona was about 5.05% in August 2026, which is healthy. But anyone outside the EU should run the numbers on gross, not net, and should check what their home country's double taxation agreement with Spain allows them to credit against tax at home.
Holiday lets and registration
Short-term holiday letting brings its own obligations beyond tax: in Andalusia a tourist property must be registered before it is advertised, and community rules in some buildings restrict it outright. That is a subject of its own, and it is worth checking the building's statutes before you buy if holiday income is part of your plan.
Non resident property tax Spain when you sell
Selling brings three separate obligations, and it helps to know that one of them is handled by your buyer, not by you.
Capital gains tax at 19%
The gain on a sale is taxed at 19% for all non-residents, regardless of where they live, under Article 25 of the Non-Resident Income Tax Act. The gain is broadly the sale price minus the purchase price, with purchase costs and certain improvement costs added to your base. You declare it on Modelo 210.
The 3% retention
Because the tax office cannot easily chase a seller who has left the country, the law puts part of the burden on the buyer. When you sell as a non-resident, the buyer must withhold 3% of the price and pay it to the Agencia Tributaria on your account. Your own capital gains return then settles the difference: if 19% of your gain is less than the 3% withheld, you claim the balance back; if it is more, you pay the rest.
This catches sellers who expect the full price at the notary. You will receive 97% of it, and the remaining 3% is a tax payment made in your name, which you reconcile afterwards.
Plusvalía municipal
The town hall charges its own tax on the increase in the value of the land, not the building, over the years you owned it, up to a maximum of twenty. Each municipality sets the rate, capped at 30% by law. Two protections were written into the Local Finance Act after a Constitutional Court ruling in 2021. If the land has not increased in value between purchase and sale, no plusvalía is due at all, provided you declare the sale and show both deeds. And if your actual gain is smaller than the figure the town's formula produces, you can ask to be taxed on the actual gain instead.
In a sale, plusvalía is legally the seller's tax. Private contracts sometimes shift it, so read that clause.
Catching up on a missed return: small surcharges if you file first
The practical lesson is simple, and it applies to every kind of non-resident property tax in Spain. If you have missed a year, file it now; the surcharge on a typical imputed income bill is modest.
IBI is simplest by direct debit from your Spanish account; the town hall then collects it automatically every year.
Wealth tax, solidarity tax and inheritance
For most buyers of a single home, neither wealth tax applies in practice. Spain also has a wealth tax, a separate solidarity tax on large fortunes introduced in 2023, and an inheritance and gift tax, and non-residents can be liable for all three on their Spanish assets. The thresholds, the regional rules and the interaction with your home country's system are specific enough that we will not summarise them in a paragraph.
If your Spanish assets are substantial, or if you are planning how the property will pass to your children, take advice from a tax adviser who handles both countries. That is a conversation worth having before you decide whose name goes on the deed, not after.
If you move here, the picture changes
Everything above applies to owners who live elsewhere. The day you become tax resident in Spain, most of it stops applying, and a different set of rules takes over.
Tax residence is decided by where you actually live, principally by spending more than 183 days of the calendar year in Spain, not by owning property here or holding an NIE. Once you are resident, you no longer file Modelo 210 at all. Your income is declared on the ordinary Spanish income tax return instead, alongside everyone else who lives here.
The most welcome change concerns imputed income. Article 85 of the Personal Income Tax Act, the same article that creates the tax, expressly excludes the taxpayer's main home. A resident living in their Spanish property pays no imputed income tax on it. If you keep a second property you do not let, imputed income continues on that one, but no longer on the home you live in.
IBI continues, because it is charged on the property rather than the person. But in Estepona, registering on the padrón as a resident is what brings the town's IBI reduction, so the move tends to lower that bill too. Our guides to moving to Spain from the UK and from the US cover the visa routes and what residence means for the rest of your tax affairs, which is a larger question than property alone.
One caution runs the other way. Becoming resident means Spain taxes your worldwide income, not only what arises here, subject to the double taxation agreement with your former country. That is a much bigger decision than the few hundred euros of imputed income it saves, and it should be made with an adviser who knows both systems.
Doing it yourself, or paying someone
Modelo 210 is a two-page form. The Agencia Tributaria publishes it online, and for imputed income on a single property the calculation fits on a napkin: cadastral value, times 2% or 1.1%, times 19% or 24%, times your share, prorated by days. You can file it yourself.
The complications are practical rather than intellectual. Filing electronically needs either a Spanish digital certificate or a representative. Paying needs a Spanish bank account or a direct debit set up correctly, and the direct debit windows close earlier than the filing windows. And rental income from a property with several owners, or let for part of the year, means several declarations, each with its own days and percentages.
A gestor or tax adviser will handle all of it for a fee, and online filing services exist that are cheaper still. Whichever you choose, the obligation is yours, not your representative's. Keep the receipts, and put the April window in your own calendar.
Seven things to set up for your non-resident property tax in Spain
Seven small steps at the start keep your taxes simple for years. We moved here from Germany ourselves and went through the NIE, the residencia and the paperwork that comes with settling in Spain, so this is a short list of things that are easiest to set up at the start.
- Find the cadastral value on the first IBI receipt, or request a cadastral certificate. Everything else is calculated from it.
- Confirm whether 2% or 1.1% applies to your property, once, and write it down.
- Set up direct debits for IBI and the refuse charge from a Spanish account, so neither depends on post reaching you abroad.
- Put the April window in your calendar if you let the property, and the April to December window if you do not.
- If buying off-plan, file nothing until completion, then start with a prorated first year.
- If you let from outside the EU, budget on gross, not net, and check your double taxation agreement.
- Keep every deed and invoice. They set your capital gains base and your plusvalía defence years from now.
For how these taxes sit within the purchase itself, from the reservation to the notary, our complete guide to buying property in Spain sets out every stage, and the full list of developments covers the whole coast if you are still choosing where.
Non-resident property tax in Spain: modest, predictable and easy to plan
With the cadastral value in hand, you can plan every tax in advance. If you already own: find your cadastral value, confirm your rate, and check whether your 2025 imputed income return is filed, because it is due by 31 December 2026 under the old calendar. If you are about to buy: ask for the cadastral value of the property before you sign, and if it is off-plan, note that nothing is owed until the day it is finished.
And if you are still deciding whether to buy, the taxes on a Spanish holiday home are modest and predictable, and we set them out for any property you are considering.
Frequently asked questions
What is the non resident property tax Spain charges every year?
The non-resident property tax in Spain consists of two taxes as a rule. IBI, the municipal property tax billed by the town hall, and non-resident income tax filed on Modelo 210. If you do not let the property, that second tax is charged on an imputed income, a notional figure based on the cadastral value.
How is imputed income calculated for a non-resident?
The imputed income is 2% of the cadastral value, or 1.1% if the municipality has had a general cadastral revaluation in force within the last ten years. Non-residents in the EU or EEA pay 19% on that figure; everyone else, including UK and US owners, pays 24%.
Do I pay imputed income tax on a property that is still being built?
No. Spanish income tax law states that no income is imputed for properties under construction. The obligation starts once the home is finished and yours, which matters to anyone buying off-plan.
When is Modelo 210 due?
For imputed income from the 2026 tax year onwards, between 1 April and 31 December of the following year. Rental income from 2026 is declared once a year, in the first twenty days of April. The 2025 tax year still follows the old calendar.
Can non-residents deduct expenses from rental income in Spain?
Only if they are resident in the EU or the EEA. Owners resident elsewhere, including the UK and the US, are taxed at 24% on gross rental income with no deductions.
Do non-residents pay IBI in Spain?
Yes. As part of the non-resident property tax in Spain, IBI is charged on the property, not on the person, so every owner pays it regardless of residence. The town hall sets the rate within a legal range of 0.4% to 1.1% of the cadastral value for urban property.
What tax do non-residents pay when selling Spanish property?
Capital gains tax at 19% on the gain, declared on Modelo 210. The buyer withholds 3% of the price and pays it to the tax office on your account. The town hall also charges plusvalía municipal on the increase in land value.
How do I catch up on a missed Modelo 210?
Simply file it as soon as possible. If you file of your own accord, a small surcharge of 1% plus 1% for each full month applies, up to 15% plus interest after twelve months, and no penalty is added.
Do both owners of a jointly owned property file separately?
Yes. Each co-owner files their own Modelo 210 for their share. The form now has a field for your ownership percentage and another for the number of days the property was at your disposal or let.
Is there a wealth tax on Spanish property for non-residents?
Spain has a wealth tax and a separate solidarity tax on large fortunes, and non-residents can be liable on their Spanish assets. For most buyers of a single home neither applies, but the thresholds and regional rules are specific enough that anyone with substantial Spanish assets should take advice.
Sources & official links
- BOE – Non-Resident Income Tax Act (Royal Legislative Decree 5/2004), Articles 24 and 25 (checked 21.09.2026)
- BOE – Personal Income Tax Act 35/2006, Article 85 (imputed income from property) (checked 21.09.2026)
- BOE – Order HAC/623/2026 amending Modelo 210 filing deadlines (checked 21.09.2026)
- Agencia Tributaria – Note on the new Modelo 210 filing deadlines (checked 21.09.2026)
- BOE – Local Finance Act (Royal Legislative Decree 2/2004), Articles 72, 104, 107 and 108 (checked 21.09.2026)
- BOE – General Tax Act 58/2003, Article 27 (late filing surcharges) (checked 21.09.2026)
- Catastro – Collective valuation announcements, province of Málaga (checked 21.09.2026)
