Modelo 210: Deemed Personal Use Tax

What does the self-use tax cost for a holiday property in Mallorca?

The self-use tax is not a separate tax with its own law, but the colloquial name for something Spain imposes on all non-resident owners: anyone who owns a flat or house and uses it themselves or leaves it empty has a fictitious income imputed to them — the renta imputada, a notional yield that you never actually received. It is declared and paid via the Modelo 210, the Spanish tax form for income of non-residents. The basis of the calculation is the cadastral value (valor catastral), which you'll find on your IBI notice; an imputation rate is applied to this — 1.1%, if the cadastral value was reviewed in a general revaluation, otherwise 2%. The tax rate of the non-resident tax IRNR (Impuesto sobre la Renta de no Residentes): 19% for residents of the EU or the EEA, 24% for everyone else, is then applied to the fictitious income thus determined. What this means for your property in Mallorca is worked out by the calculator above on this page — using your cadastral value, your days of ownership and your share.

How the self-use tax is calculated

The formula is short, and it has four steps. Once you've understood it, you'll lose your fear of the form.

• Step one: the cadastral value. The valor catastral is the officially assessed value of your property in the Spanish land registry. It has nothing to do with the purchase price and is, as a rule, considerably lower. You'll find it on the annual IBI property tax notice (Impuesto sobre Bienes Inmuebles — the municipal property tax), usually broken down into land value and building value. For our calculation, the total is what counts.
• Step two: the imputation rate. A percentage is applied to the cadastral value. It is either 1.1% or 2% — which one applies depends solely on when your municipality last carried out a general review of cadastral values.
• Step three: the fictitious income. The result is the renta imputada, i.e. the tax base. You are not allowed to deduct anything from it: no IBI, no community fees, no insurance, no interest. This is what sharply distinguishes self-use from letting.
• Step four: the IRNR rate.The fictitious income is taxed at the non-resident tax rate: 19%, if you are tax-resident in the EU, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein, otherwise 24%. So for German, Austrian and other EU-resident owners, the lower rate applies; anyone resident in Switzerland or the United Kingdom, for example, falls under the general rate.

Why there are two imputation rates

The reduced rate is not a discount but a form of compensation. When a municipality revises its cadastral values as part of a general revaluation — in official Spanish a ponencia de valores, the municipality-wide value assessment — the values often rise noticeably. So that the imputed income doesn't increase to the same extent, the lower imputation rate applies to these properties. For all others, whose cadastral value has remained unchanged for many years and is therefore tending to be too low, the general rate applies.

The condition itself has a legal history, and that's exactly what causes most of the mistakes. In principle, a ten-year look-back applies: the reduced rate applies if the cadastral value was generally reviewed and brought into force within the ten years before the tax year. For the tax years 2023 to 2025, a transitional rule applied instead of this look-back, which simply referred to a revision since 2012 — meaning many properties whose revision was by then more than ten years old still fell under the reduced rate. This transitional rule was not extended for 2026. The ten-year rule applies again. That's why the calculator above asks about the revision differently depending on the tax year selected: for an older year, it asks for the reference year; for 2026, it asks for the ten-year window.

Where do you find the answer? You can read the cadastral value directly from the IBI notice. The year of the last general revision is usually not stated there. You can find it out from the Catastro — the Spanish land registry authority — or from your municipality; many town halls on Mallorca provide it by phone, and via your property's cadastral reference it can also be looked up online. If in doubt, ask your Gestoría, the Spanish administrative and tax office that many owners engage anyway for dealings with the authorities.

Calculating proportionally: days and co-ownership

Owners most often overlook two reductions — and both work in their favour.

The reduction by days. The fictitious income only arises for the days on which the property belonged to you and was available for your own use. If you bought in May, you don't pay tax for the whole year, only for the remaining days. The same applies if you rented out the property for part of the year: for the rental days, the imputation no longer applies, and instead you pay tax on the actual rental income — in a separate procedure, with different deadlines and, for EU residents, with deductible costs. Both declarations can coexist within the same year.

The reduction according to co-ownership share.Spain doesn't tax the property, but the person. Each co-owner pays tax on their share and submits their own return. For a married couple who each hold half in the escritura — the notarial deed of purchase — that means two Modelo 210 forms per year, each covering half of the deemed income. A joint return, as known under German tax law, doesn't exist here.

The calculator above reflects both aspects: you enter your days of ownership and your percentage share, and you see the amount that falls to you personally — not the amount for the whole property.

Worked examples

Below the calculator you'll find three fully worked example cases that you can adopt with a single click. They show an owner resident in the EU with a revised cadastral value, a case with residence in a non-EU country and a non-revised cadastral value, and a proportional case involving a mid-year purchase and 50% co-ownership. This lets you see at a glance how strongly residency, revision and ownership share shift the result.

Special cases

• Renting out for part of the year. For the rented days, the declaration of actual rental income applies; for the rest of the year, the imputation applies. Anyone who only declares rental income and forgets the vacant days has submitted an incomplete return.
• Multiple properties, garage, storage room. What matters is the cadastral reference. If the parking space or the trastero has its own reference, it counts for tax purposes as a separate property with its own return. If it belongs to the flat as an ancillary area, it is included in the flat's cadastral value.
• Undeveloped plot of land. Without a building, no deemed income arises. A pure building plot does not trigger an imputation, but the municipal IBI is still due.
• Purchase or sale during the year. The days are calculated proportionally. On a sale, something else applies: the buyer must withhold 3% from the purchase price and pay it to the tax office on your behalf — an advance payment towards your capital gains tax, which you can later reclaim in full or in part.
• Property held through a Spanish company. In that case, an entirely different regime applies, potentially including the special levy for non-resident companies. That belongs on a tax advisor's desk, not in this calculator.
• Change to tax residency. Anyone who becomes tax resident in Spain during the course of the year leaves the IRNR and falls under Spanish income tax IRPF (Impuesto sobre la Renta de las Personas Físicas) for the entire year. The imputation doesn't disappear in this case, it merely moves into a different return.

Deadlines and forms: filing the Modelo 210 correctly

The tax arises — in technical terms: the devengo, the tax point in time — on 31 December of the tax year. It's declared the following year: the window runs from 1 April to 31 December of the year after the tax year (Art. 5.b) Orden EHA/3316/2010, as amended by Orden HAC/623/2026). For the 2026 tax year, that means: file between 1 April and 31 December 2027.

The form is the Modelo 210. As the type of income you select rentas imputadas de inmuebles urbanos — imputed income from urban properties. This is an autoliquidación, a self-assessment declaration: you calculate it yourself, you declare it yourself, you pay it yourself. Each person files their own for their share.

The Spanish tax office — the AEAT (Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria), commonly known as Hacienda — sends no assessments and no reminders for this tax. It's an obligation you must fulfil on your own initiative. The fact that no post ever arrived is no indication that nothing is due.

Filing is done electronically via the AEAT website. For this you need either a certificado electrónico — a personal digital certificate that you apply for in Spain and install on your computer —, access via Cl@ve, the Spanish citizen identification system, or a representative who files on your behalf: a Gestoría or a tax adviser. Payment is made by direct debit from a Spanish account (domiciliación, though only within a shorter window at the start of the deadline), via an NRC receipt that your Spanish bank issues after payment, or through the representative. Without a NIE (Número de Identidad de Extranjero, the Spanish foreigner identification and tax number) — you can't file at all without it; it's the prerequisite for everything.

If you're running late

If you file after the deadline has passed without the authority having written to you first, the recargo applies — the surcharge for late filing under Art. 27 Ley 58/2003. It starts at 1% and increases by a further 1% for each full month of delay. If the delay exceeds twelve months, a fixed surcharge of 15% applies, plus late-payment interest from the thirteenth month onward. Anyone who pays the surcharge on time and does not appeal against either the surcharge or the return gets it reduced by 25%. The calculator above will show you the surcharge as well, if you wish, when you select a past tax year.

The most common mistakes

• Not filing at all, because there's no letting. By far the most common case. It's precisely pure owner-occupation that triggers the filing obligation.
• Using the wrong imputation rate. Usually because the transitional rule for 2023 to 2025 was carried over into 2026 without checking.
• Only one return for two owners. Each share needs its own Modelo 210.
• Confusing the cadastral value with the purchase price or market value. That drives the tax up to a multiple of the correct amount.
• Missing the deadline because no reminder arrived. None arrives.
• Forgetting the property in the German tax return. The imputed income is exempt in Germany, but it still affects your tax rate via the progression clause (Progressionsvorbehalt).

What comes next?

The owner-occupation tax is one building block. How it fits in with the other obligations of a non-resident owner is explained in the overview on Non-resident tax in Spain. Where the crucial value comes from and how to check it is explained in the article on Valor Catastral. As soon as you let the property for even a few weeks, a different procedure applies — more on that in Taxing rental income as a non-resident. The annual local levy is covered in the article on IBI, and anyone who is still at the pre-purchase stage should first calculate the purchase incidental costs in Mallorca.

Legal basis and status

The attribution of the notional income and the applicable tax rate are set out in Art. 24.5 and Art. 25.1.a) of Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004 (TRLIRNR), the recast Non-Resident Income Tax Act. For determining this, the IRNR refers to Art. 85.1 Ley 35/2006, the Spanish Personal Income Tax Act (IRPF) — this is where the imputation rates and the review condition are regulated. The transitional rule for tax years 2023 to 2025 is found in the Disposición adicional quincuagésima quinta of the same Ley 35/2006. The filing deadline is governed by Art. 5.b) Orden EHA/3316/2010, as currently in force, and the surcharges for late filing by Art. 27 Ley 58/2003 (General Tax Act).

All rates on this page are drawn from a dated tax register and are inserted automatically when the page is called up, not typed in by hand. The calculator shows below it the underlying legal status and the official sources. This page does not replace individual tax advice.

Frequently asked questions

Related topics

• All tax obligations for non-resident owners at a glance
• Understanding, checking and challenging the cadastral value
• Letting: income, costs and deadlines
• IBI: the local authority's annual property tax
• What buying costs on top of the purchase price