Modelo 210 is changing: the new non-resident tax calendar for island home owners

Most foreign owners of a flat or villa on Tenerife or Fuerteventura have heard of Modelo 210 — the Spanish non-resident income-tax return — usually from the gestor who files it for them once a year. Fewer know that in June 2026 the Ministry of Finance rewrote both its calendar and its content, or that a 2025 court ruling has reopened a question British owners thought Brexit had closed. Here is what changes, what does not, and what to put in the diary.

Why you file Modelo 210 even if you never rent out

Spain taxes a non-resident owner on the mere availability of a home: an imputed income of 2% of the cadastral value (1.1% where the municipality's cadastral values have been revised recently — the cut-off year is fixed by law year by year; your IBI receipt carries the cadastral value), prorated by days and by your share of the title. On that figure the rate is 19% for residents of the EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, and 24% for everyone else — which, since 2021, includes the United Kingdom.

A worked example: an apartment in Costa Adeje, Tenerife, with a cadastral value of €120,000 and the 1.1% rate produces an imputed income of €1,320 — a tax of about €251 a year for a German owner, €317 for a British one. Small, annual and very easy to forget; and the years nobody filed surface the day the property is sold or inherited.

If you rent the home out, the rent itself is taxed instead: EU/EEA owners on the net amount after expenses, everyone else on the gross.

The new calendar

Order HAC/623/2026 (Official State Gazette, 23 June 2026) moves two deadlines that the islands' foreign owners have lived by for years:

• Imputed income — from the 2026 tax year: the filing window runs from 1 April to 31 December of the following year, no longer from 1 January. Your 2026 return can be filed from 1 April 2027. The return for 2025 is unaffected: it is due at any point in 2026, that is, by 31 December 2026.
• Rental income with tax to pay — from 2026: one return a year, in the first twenty days of April of the following year, whether you group the year's rent or declare it separately. Until now the grouped return was due in January and separate returns quarterly. The quarterly rhythm survives only for rent accrued up to September 2026 (last filing in October 2026); rent from October onwards goes into the April 2027 return.
• Paying by direct debit? The windows close earlier: 1–15 April for rent, 1 April–23 December for imputed income.

What has not moved: returns with a zero result (1–20 January), refund claims (from 1 February of the following year, within four years), and the return that follows a sale — the buyer still withholds 3% of the price, and the seller files Modelo 210 within three months after the first month following the sale.

The form asks for more — from 1 January 2027

Every return filed from 1 January 2027, whatever year it covers, uses a redesigned Modelo 210:

• a new annex breaking down the deductible expenses of rented properties, category by category, instead of one global figure;
• new boxes for the number of days the home was at your disposal (or let) and your percentage share of the title — the form now does the prorating with you, visibly;
• a flag for the property's cadastral reference (with or without one);
• for sales by spouses, a clear choice between a joint return and individual ones.

The order's own preamble states the purpose: better "checking and control" of property income, plus better assistance to filers. Read that as cross-checking — against the Cadastre, the IBI, the rental registry, the co-owner's return. The practical consequence is not more tax but more paperwork: keep every invoice classified, know your cadastral reference, and agree with your co-owner who declares what.

Non-EU owners: the 24% on gross, and the ruling that challenges it

For UK, Swiss, US and other non-EU/EEA owners who rent out, the sting has never been the rate alone but the base: 24% of gross rent, with no deduction for community fees, IBI, insurance, repairs, mortgage interest or depreciation. On 28 July 2025 the Audiencia Nacional (appeal 636/2021) held, in the case of a US resident letting a flat in Spain, that denying those deductions breaches the free movement of capital under Article 63 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union — a freedom the Court of Justice has repeatedly extended to third countries.

Two honest caveats. A single Audiencia Nacional judgment is not binding case law, the State can take it to the Supreme Court, and the tax office continues to apply the law as written. But for an owner in Surrey or Zurich with a let property in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, the consequences are concrete: the returns of the last four years can be the subject of a rectification request, and the amounts overpaid may be recoverable. It is a decision to take with the figures on the table — and to take soon, because every year another tax year falls out of the four-year window.

A short checklist for island owners

1. 2025 imputed income: file before 31 December 2026 — the last return under the old calendar.
2. From 2027, note 1 April as the day the window opens, not 1 January.
3. Landlords: the 2026 rent is declared 1–20 April 2027; the last quarterly return is October 2026.
4. Find your cadastral reference and value on the IBI receipt, and check which imputation rate your municipality carries.
5. EU/EEA landlords: start keeping expense invoices by category now — the 2027 form will ask for them that way.
6. Non-EU landlords: ask about the 2025 ruling before the four-year clock erases another year.
7. Selling? Nothing has changed: 3% retention, and a Modelo 210 within the following four months.

Non-resident tax is rarely large. It is the years nobody filed that cost money — at the sale, at the inheritance, with surcharges.

Our tax team prepares and files Modelo 210 for non-resident owners on both islands, and reviews past years where a refund may be in play — talk to us.