Mallorca.com
property

Personal use or rental

Responsible for this content: Frank Menze

Own use or rental

Explanation

Imputación de rentas means notional income for days that are not let. Own use and vacancy are treated alike.

Explanation

An ETV is the Balearic authorisation for tourist holiday letting. Enter the expected share of days available after your own use; an ETV alone does not guarantee occupancy.

Explanation

Gross rent for the whole property per occupied night, excluding IVA. This is your assumption, not a market-price recommendation.

Explanation

Booking-dependent cleaning, linen and consumables for the whole property per day let.

Explanation

Percentage of gross rent. Enter your actual or assumed commission.

Explanation

Management and readiness costs. The calculator treats them as fully economic and tax-deductible once the property is offered for payment; a time apportionment may be required in some cases.

Explanation

IBI, insurance and community charges for the whole property. They are paid in full in cash flow but allocated only to letting days for tax.

Explanation

Interest and finance costs paid for the year on the whole property, excluding principal repayments.

Explanation

Full-year maintenance and repair spending for the whole property; tax treatment applies a time share and the statutory cap.

Explanation

Rendimiento neto means taxable net rental income. Depreciation uses the purchase price plus acquisition costs and improvements, excluding interest.

Explanation

The valor catastral is the official cadastral value of the whole property on the IBI notice. This calculator cannot be used without a notified value.

Explanation

The valor de la construcción is the building share excluding land on the IBI notice; it cannot exceed the total cadastral value.

Explanation

Share stated in the title deed. Each co-owner calculates and files their own share.

Explanation

Choose Yes only if the cadastral value meets the condition for the reduced imputation rate in the selected tax year.

Explanation

IRNR is Spanish non-resident income tax. Residence and information exchange determine the tax rate and cost deductions.

Explanation

Modelo 210 is Spain's non-resident tax return. This annual comparison supports tax years from 2024.

Your selected own use

Days let
167
Days not let
198
Gross rent, whole property
€25,050.00
Variable letting costs
-€4,175.00
Platform or agency commission
-€4,509.00
Annual fixed letting costs
-€1,200.00
Annual running property costs
-€2,400.00
Annual interest and finance costs
€0.00
Annual maintenance and repairs
-€900.00
Cash flow after ownership share
€11,866.00
IRNR (non-resident tax) on letting · Modelo 210 (non-resident return)
-€1,968.76
IRNR on imputación de rentas (notional income for days not let)
-€226.75
Owner's net result
€9,670.49
rendimiento neto (taxable net rental income)
€10,361.89

Rental income and imputation belong in two separate Modelo 210 returns.

The individual cash-flow lines show the whole property; from the ‘Cash flow after ownership share’ line onward, amounts reflect your ownership share of 100%.

Comparison

Pure own use with no letting
-€3,718.00
Letting strategy at E = 0
€12,508.19

The two tipping points

When does letting stop covering annual costs and taxes?

The condition first fails at 266 own-use days.

When is letting worse than pure own use?

The condition first fails at 342 own-use days.

Cost of your own-use days

Average cost of your own-use days so far
€47.30
Cost of the next own-use day
€0.00

Running property costs are paid in full in cash flow but apportioned only to letting days for tax.

Building depreciation only reduces tax; it is not a payment and is not deducted again from cash flow.

A positive cost carry-forward is shown for information only and does not change this one-year net result.

Standing assumption: the property is let for payment on market terms. Free or discounted occupation is outside this calculator.

For non-Spanish-resident individuals owning the completed, usable dwelling outright and with no permanent establishment. An ETV (Balearic holiday-letting licence) does not extend this tax scope.

One-year Spanish after-tax operating comparison: no principal, investment, value change, furniture depreciation, IVA, Ecotasa or home-state credit; no purchase or sale during the year.

Three calculated examples

Little own use

Own-use days in the tax year
60
Days let
167
Owner's net result
€9,670.49

Near the first tipping point

Own-use days in the tax year
266
Days let
54
Owner's net result
-€46.49

Third-country residence

Own-use days in the tax year
60
Days let
167
Owner's net result
€5,567.58

Legal status: January 1, 2023

Sources

This calculation is provided for guidance only and is not a substitute for tax or legal advice in specific cases.

Is it still worth renting out your property in Mallorca if you're often there yourself?

For tax purposes, your own stay changes nothing: for every day the property is not rented, the Spanish tax authorities apply the same notional income — regardless of whether you're living in it yourself or it's standing empty. So there's no tax-related tipping point. The tipping point is economic: every day you use it yourself is a day when no rent comes in, while the costs keep running.

That's exactly what the calculator above works out. It sets out two versions of the same year side by side — once with your personal use, once without — and tells you from which number of personal-use days onward the rental no longer covers your entered annual costs, and from which point it actually brings in less than not renting at all. And it shows you what a single day of personal use costs you.

How it's calculated

The calculation is deliberately laid out in full so you can follow every intermediate figure. The starting point is all days of the tax year during which the property belongs to you. From this you subtract your personal-use days; what remains are the available days. Of these available days, the proportion you enter as occupancy is rented out — nights already begun don't count, so the figure is rounded down to whole nights.

The rented nights produce the gross rental income. From this, the costs that arise solely because of the rental are deducted: the expense per rented night for cleaning, linen and handover, the commission of the platform or management, and the annual fixed costs you bear even if not a single booking comes in. After that, the ongoing costs of the property are deducted, which you pay in any case: property tax, insurance, community charges, interest and maintenance. Finally, we deduct both taxes — the one on rental income and the one on the unrented period.

Two points in this calculation look at first glance like an error, and they aren't.

The first concerns the ongoing costs. In your cash flow, we deduct them in full, because you pay them in full. For tax purposes, however, you may only claim them for the period during which the property was actually rented out — the remainder falls on the unrented period and is lost for tax purposes. Same calculation, two different figures for the same expense.

The second concerns depreciation. On the building portion of your property, you may claim annually 3% as deductible expenses, proportional to the rented period. This reduces your tax, but is not a payment — no money actually flows out. That's why depreciation sits in the tax line and doesn't appear again in the cash flow. If it were deducted in both places, the same money would have been counted twice.

What remains at the end is an annual result after costs and after Spanish tax, for your ownership share. Not to be confused with the rendimiento neto — that's what the net rental income is called in the Spanish tax return, i.e. the assessment basis before tax. Without repayment, without investments, without the property's value development, and without whatever your country of residence does with the result afterwards.

The two tipping points, and what they really say

The calculator gives two figures, and they answer different questions.

First: From when does the rental no longer cover the annual costs entered? Here it's checked from which day of personal use onwards the net return first slips into the negative. This deliberately does not mean "the property no longer pays for itself". The calculation works exclusively with the costs you've entered — no repayment, no reserve for the new pool pump, no hidden increase in value. Anyone servicing a mortgage has a higher threshold than the one shown here.

Second: From when does renting bring in less than not renting at all? This figure compares your year with a year without any rental at all — no rent, but also no cleaning, no commission, no standby costs. From this point on, you're working for the rental without anything coming out of it in the end. The tax on the non-rented period applies in both cases, so it doesn't shift the comparison.

A point many calculators keep quiet about: the trend is not always continuous. It can happen that a condition is met again at more days of personal use, after having tipped over in between. The cause is two discontinuities in tax law — the deduction of interest and maintenance is capped at the income from the property, and a negative net rental leads to a tax of zero rather than a negative tax. Where this occurs, the calculator states both day figures and explicitly tells you that it isn't continuous in between. It doesn't claim a clean boundary where the calculation has none.

Just as honest is the figure below it: what a single day of personal use costs you. You get two values, because one figure doesn't hold up here. The average across your previous days of personal use is the steady figure. The cost of the next day, on the other hand, jumps around, because not every additional day of personal use costs a booking in the calculation — sometimes it's free, sometimes it costs a whole night.

And along with that, the most important caveat of all: the calculator compares money, not quality of life. It tells you what a week in your own house costs. Whether it's worth it is for you to decide. The default values in the fields are freely chosen illustrative figures, so you see a result straight away — no market data, nothing typical, nothing Mallorca-specific. Replace them with your own figures, otherwise you're calculating for someone else's property.

Special cases and limits of applicability

The calculator applies to natural persons without tax residency in Spain, with full ownership of a completed, usable residential property that is let for rent at market conditions. Outside this scope are, among others:

  • Usufruct. If the right of use is separated out, the deemed income falls on the beneficial user, not the owner. The calculator's calculation then doesn't fit.
  • Properties under construction or properties that cannot legally be used. No deemed income is applied for them.
  • Hotel-like services. Anyone offering meals, room cleaning during the stay, or reception services is moving towards a commercial business, and thus into an entirely different taxation regime.
  • Free-of-charge or discounted use granted to friends and family. The calculator assumes market conditions. If you don't enter a rental price, it treats it as "not let at all" — it doesn't pretend that a favour stay is a rental.
  • Missing cadastral value (valor catastral). Without a stated cadastral value, the law prescribes a substitute assessment basis. The calculator doesn't model this and visibly rejects the case rather than showing you a false zero.
  • Purchase or sale during the course of the year. This is about an annual view based on full-year ownership. For a partial year, it's better to calculate directly with the calculator for taxing your rental income.
  • Residency outside the EU and the EEA. In that case, the rate of 19% does not apply, but rather 24% — and above all: no deduction of costs. The gross rent is taxed. The calculator reflects this; you just need to set the residency correctly.

An ETV licence (estancia turística en viviendas, the Balearic permit for tourist letting) doesn't change any of this. It allows you to market the property for tourism, it doesn't oblige you to. You may live in your own house at any time, even with a licence.

Deadlines and forms

For rental income you submit the Modelo 210 — the tax form for non-residents — since the consolidation of income, generally as an annual declaration in the following year. For the period not let, the imputación de rentas applies, the deemed income from periods of personal use and vacancy; this too is filed via the Modelo 210, with its own, later filing window in the following year. If you both let and used the property yourself in the same year, that's two declarations with different deadlines, not one.

The exact windows depend on the tax year and change; that's why they aren't given here as fixed dates, but come from the calculators themselves. For the rental side you'll find them in the calculator for taxation of rental income as a non-resident, for the period not let in the calculator for self-use tax. There you'll also find why pure vacancy is treated the same for tax purposes as a week with your own family in the house.

The assessment basis for the notional (deemed) income is set out in Art. 85.1 of the Spanish Personal Income Tax Act (LIRPF) — this also regulates which rate is to be applied to the cadastral value, the more favourable of 1.1% where the cadastral valuation is sufficiently up to date, or otherwise 2%. For non-residents, this provision is made applicable via Art. 24.5 of the Non-Resident Income Tax Act (TRLIRNR); Art. 24.6 TRLIRNR grants residents of the EU and EEA the right to deduct costs, referring for this purpose to the rules of the LIRPF, among them the catalogue of deductible costs in Art. 23.1 LIRPF. The tax rate itself follows from Art. 25.1.a) TRLIRNR.

Exactly which legal position is being used for the calculation and where each individual figure comes from is shown by the calculator alongside its result — including the points at which we apply our own interpretation, because the administrative practice of the AEAT (Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax authority) does not expressly regulate the case. This does not replace proper tax advice.

Does it affect my tax whether I live in the property myself or it stands empty?
No. For every day it's not rented out, the law applies the same notional income based on the cadastral value. Your presence makes no difference to this. That's why the tipping point the calculator looks for is an economic one, not a tax one.
Do I have to report to the tax office which days I was there myself?
You don't report days of personal stay, but the number of rented days and, derived from that, the number of remaining days. Whether you were on-site yourself during the non-rented period isn't asked about. You should nevertheless keep the receipts for the rental periods.
Am I even allowed to use my house myself if it has an ETV licence?
Yes. The licence permits touristic marketing, it doesn't require it. You're free to switch between personal use and renting. Just check whether your contract with an agency or platform binds you more tightly than the law does.
Can I deduct the costs for the time I was there myself?
No. Only the costs attributable to the rented period are deductible; ongoing costs are apportioned on a time basis for this purpose. And the deduction is only available at all if you're resident in the EU or the EEA. The calculator makes this apportionment automatically.
Do I need two tax returns, or is one enough?
If you had both rented periods and periods without rental in the same year, that means two returns with different filing windows, both using the form for non-residents. If the property wasn't rented out at all for the whole year, only the return for the notional income remains. If it was rented out without any gaps, that one is dropped. The calculator shows you which returns apply in your case.
What changes if I live outside the EU and the EEA?
Two things, and both are significant. The tax rate is higher, and you're not allowed to deduct any costs at all — the gross rent is taxed, not the profit. In this scenario, the calculation tips clearly in favour of personal use much earlier. Set your residency accordingly in the calculator.
What applies if friends or family stay for free or at a reduced rate?
This case falls outside the calculator's scope. It assumes a paid rental at market conditions; a favour-based arrangement is assessed differently for tax purposes and should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. If you don't enter a rental price, the calculator simply treats those days as not rented.
Does the calculator cover my financing and the increase in value?
No, it compares one operating year. Loan repayment, investments, value appreciation and taxation in your country of residence are left out. Anyone servicing a loan therefore needs more than the coverage threshold shown here.
Does the calculator tell me whether I should rent out?
It tells you what your personal use costs, in euros per day and per year. What those days are worth to you is something it can't know. The decision remains yours, the calculator just provides the price for it.