Tourist tax for holiday rental hosts

How much Ecotasa do you need to collect as a holiday rental owner?

For a holiday apartment or finca with an ETV licence (Estancia Turística en Vivienda, the official licence for letting residential property), the tourist tax is €2 per guest per day of stay in high season. In low season (temporada baja, the legally defined winter period), this amount falls by 75%; if a stay at the same property exceeds 8 days, a further discount of 50% applies to the remaining days. Guests under the age of 16 are fully exempt.

The tax is officially called Impuesto sobre Estancias Turísticas (ITS, tax on tourist stays) and is commonly known as Ecotasa. It is a tax specific to the Balearic Islands, not a Spain-wide levy, and is collected by the ATIB (Agència Tributària de les Illes Balears, the Balearic tax authority). Enter your details in the calculator above to see the amount for your stay, with a breakdown.

How the tax is calculated

The calculation is essentially a multiplication: the daily rate for your accommodation category × the number of days stayed × the number of guests liable for the tax. Everything else is a discount on this basic amount, known in law as the cuota íntegra (the tax amount before any reductions).

The daily rate depends on the accommodation category

The law sets different rates by type of tourist accommodation. Licensed holiday apartments and houses (viviendas turísticas de vacaciones) are in the same bracket as more basic hotels, Agroturismos (farms offering guest rooms) and Turismo de interior; higher-end hotel and apartment categories are in a higher bracket, while hostales, campsites and hostels are in a lower one. As an ETV holiday rental owner, the rate is €2 per guest per day, whether you let the property yourself or use a property management company. Find out how to obtain or transfer a licence in our guide to the Mallorca ETV licence.

The low-season discount

A bonificación is a percentage discount on the cuota íntegra. For stays between 1 November and 30 April, the law provides for a discount of 75%. This period is laid down in law, rather than merely being administrative practice, and applies automatically according to the calendar date — regardless of the weather, occupancy or room rate. From 1 May to 31 October, the full rate applies.

The additional discount for long stays

If a guest stays at the same establishment for more than 8 days, the charge is reduced by a further 50%. The order matters: the two discounts are applied one after the other, not added together. The off-season discount reduces the daily rate first; the long-stay discount then applies to that already reduced amount. Adding the percentages together gives the wrong result.

A detail that is easy to miss: Art. 13.2 b) describes the long-stay discount not on a day-by-day basis, but in terms of the full tax liability corresponding to the ninth and subsequent days — in other words, the combined amount for all qualifying days. The ATIB, by contrast, publishes the rates by day. Under the current rates, both approaches produce the same result, because applying the discount to each day gives the same total as applying it to the sum. The distinction becomes relevant in practice only when different daily rates apply during a single stay.

Young guests are not counted

Guests under 16 years of age are exempt from the tax under Art. 5.1 a). They are not charged a reduced amount; they are left out of the calculation altogether. In practice, this means you multiply only by the number of taxable guests. You should also record the children’s ages in your booking records so you can substantiate the exemption if necessary.

Special cases

Agroturismo, Hotel rural and Turismo de interior with star ratings

These establishments have their own flat-rate entry in the tariff. However, if they have opted for a star classification, Art. 13.5 has required the rate for that star category, rather than the flat rate, since 1 January 2023. This mainly affects larger Agroturismo establishments classified along hotel lines — depending on the category, their daily rate is considerably higher than that of an ETV property.

The twelve-hour rule

Under Art. 12.2, a day of stay is not the same as an overnight stay. Part-days count as full days once they exceed twelve hours. A late check-in followed by an early check-out the next day may therefore be counted differently from what the booking system suggests. If in doubt, check the actual times against this threshold rather than simply counting nights.

Stays spanning a change of season

If a stay begins in late April and ends in May, the same rate does not apply to the entire stay. Each day is charged according to the period it falls in: days up to 30 April receive the off-season discount, while days from 1 May are charged at the full rate. The long-stay discount continues independently of this; it depends solely on the length of the stay at the same establishment. The calculator above handles precisely these mixed-rate stays correctly.

Other exemptions

• Force majeure (Art. 5.1 b): Stays caused by circumstances beyond the control of the person concerned.
• Health reasons (Art. 5.1 c): Stays for medical reasons, including accompanying persons.
• Social programmes (Art. 5.1 d): Stays under publicly funded programmes, such as social tourism.

These exemptions do not apply automatically; you must provide proof. Obtain the relevant certificate and keep it with your records — if you are audited, you will need to justify why the tax was not charged.

Timeshare use

For properties under aprovechamiento por turnos (timeshare rights, commonly known as timeshare), Art. 13.4 sets out a separate rule: the applicable rate is that of the property’s accommodation category; the tax is due for every day the person stays, whether or not they pay rent. Simply holding a right to use the property does not grant an exemption.

Collecting is not the same as remitting

The most important sentence for landlords is in Art. 14: you are the sustituto del contribuyente — the person responsible for paying the tax. The guest is liable for the tax. You collect it from them, record it and remit it to the ATIB. It is not your tax in economic terms, but the ATIB holds you responsible for it administratively — even if you have not collected it from the guest.

This leads to a second distinction that is often overlooked: What you collect and what you remit are two different amounts. Which one matters depends on the tax assessment method.

• Estimación directa (direct assessment) is the statutory default under Art. 12.3 a). You report what actually occurred: the actual guests, the actual days stayed and the actual amount. Here, the amount collected matches the amount remitted.
• Estimación objetiva (module-based assessment) is the alternative available on application. The tax is calculated using modules — standardised measures such as the number of places and the operating period — rather than actual occupancy. You therefore pay the amount produced by the modules, regardless of how much you collected from guests. You keep any surplus and bear any shortfall.

Under the module-based method, holiday rentals and campsites fall into grupo octavo, the eighth group. If you use estimación objetiva, the ATIB issues you a single annual tax assessment, payable between 1 May and 30 June of the following year, and you make no advance payment in September. That advance payment applies to other groups, not the eighth — although it still appears in older guides and checklists.

Whichever method you choose, keep ongoing records of guest numbers, the ages of exempt guests, days stayed and amounts collected. If a property management company looks after your property, it will often handle this accounting too — one reason to look for experience with ETV properties when choosing one. You can find providers in the Directory of property management companies, background information in the guide Property management in Mallorca.

Deadlines and forms

The ATIB uses numbered forms known as modelos. Which one you need depends on the assessment method.

Modelo 017 registers your business with the ITS tax register. Without this registration, the ATIB cannot assign your returns to your business — it is the first step, not the last.

Deferrals and payment by instalments are not permitted. Art. 14.6 expressly rules them out for this tax: applications will not be accepted for processing, and simply submitting one will not prevent enforcement proceedings from starting or continuing. Unlike with some other Spanish taxes, there is no room for negotiation here. If the legal position becomes unclear, a German-speaking lawyer from the directory can help.

If you do not file a self-assessment at all, the ATIB will not wait: it can assess the tax itself using the modules of the estimated assessment method. In practice, the amount tends to be higher than it would be based on your actual occupancy.

Legal basis and current position

The legal basis is the Ley 2/2016, de 30 de marzo, del impuesto sobre estancias turísticas en las Illes Balears, published in the BOIB on 2 April 2016 and available in consolidated form in the BOE under the identifier BOE-A-2016-4175. The rates in Art. 13.1 apply as amended by Ley 13/2017, in force since 1 January 2018. Paragraph 5, containing the star-rating rule for agrotourism establishments and rural hotels, was amended by the Ley 11/2022 was added and has applied since 1 January 2023. The authority responsible for registration, filing and payment is the ATIB.

The current position, in plain terms: A proposed increase in rates in 2025 has not come into force. And: Reports of an increase “from June 2026” concern Catalonia — a different autonomous community with its own tax — and not the Balearic Islands. For your tax calculations on Mallorca, the rates and reductions shown in this guide and the calculator above remain unchanged. The consolidated version in the BOE is always authoritative: https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2016-4175; you can find the forms and payment methods on the ATIB website at https://www.atib.es/.

Common mistakes

• Adding reductions instead of applying them one after the other. The low-season and long-stay reductions apply in sequence; adding the percentages together gives the wrong result.
• Ignoring the twelve-hour rule. Any period begun beyond twelve hours counts as a full day of stay — counting nights is not enough.
• Charging young guests at a reduced rate instead of excluding them from the calculation altogether.
• Assuming the wrong tax scheme applies. If you have not applied for anything, you are under estimación directa and must file quarterly, not once a year.
• Making a September advance payment even though holiday lets fall into the eighth group under the module scheme and receive only an annual assessment notice.
• Hoping to defer payment. An application to pay in instalments will not be processed and does not stop enforcement action.
• Confusing the module amount with the cash collected. Under estimación objetiva, you owe the module amounts, not the amount collected.
• Mistaking reports of reforms for law already in force and telling guests that higher amounts already apply.
• Treating stays that cross the seasonal boundary at a single rate, rather than assigning each day to the relevant period.
• Not retaining evidence of exemptions. Without documentation, you bear the consequences if audited.

Checklist for holiday rental owners

What comes next?

The Ecotasa is just one of several ongoing obligations for holiday rentals. Guest registration and the taxation of rental income are deliberately outside the scope of this guide — both have their own rules and deadlines and are often confused with the ITS.

• Mallorca ETV licence — requirements, application and transfer of the holiday rental licence.
• SES.Hospedajes guest registration — what information you must report for each guest and by when.
• VAT on holiday rentals — when additional services make the rental subject to VAT.
• Tax on rental income as a non-resident — what you need to declare in Spain and what you can deduct.
• Property management in Mallorca — what a property manager handles and what remains your responsibility.
• Mallorca tourist tax (Ecotasa) — the same tax from the traveller’s perspective.