Municipal Taxes Mallorca

Alongside the IBI property tax, you pay every year for waste, water and – if you have one – the driveway access. Every municipality calculates this differently; enter your details.

What do waste, water and driveway access cost per year on Mallorca?

This can't be answered with a single figure, because several quite different charges come together. Each municipality sets its own waste fee, and even the question of what it's actually based on differs from place to place. The wastewater charge, by contrast, applies uniformly across the whole island and depends mainly on water consumption. The permit for the driveway access only comes into play if your property has one, and this too is regulated by the respective municipality. Enter your details above in the calculator, and you'll get a substantiated answer for your specific case instead of an island-wide rule of thumb.

How it's calculated

For the waste fee – Catalan taxa de residus, Spanish tasa de basuras – each municipality sets its own bylaw, and even the basis for assessment differs considerably. Some municipalities scale according to the area they use as the basis for the fee – Catalan superfície tributable, literally the "tax-assessed area" – which doesn't necessarily match the actual living space. Others base it on the cadastral value (Spanish valor catastral) and the location of the property, while others still set a fixed amount per dwelling, regardless of area or value. On top of that: for one and the same area or value band, many bylaws list several possible rows at once – depending on whether door-to-door collection applies to you, whether your property is in a rural part of the municipality, or whether a voluntary waste-separation monitoring programme applies. The calculator asks for exactly that, instead of automatically applying the most expensive of these rows. Some municipalities also don't levy the charge as a classic fee, but as a so-called prestació patrimonial de caràcter públic no tributari (PPNT for short) – a public-law payment obligation that is formally neither a tax nor a fee in the strict legal sense. That's more than a legal nicety: it partly determines whether VAT is added on top in the end.

The Balearic wastewater charge, Spanish canon de saneamiento, by contrast, is regulated uniformly for all municipalities on the island and is levied by the Balearic Government, not by your municipality. It consists of a fixed amount per dwelling and month, which applies regardless of consumption, and a variable part that depends on your monthly water consumption. This variable part is tiered into five consumption blocks: those who use little pay the lowest block price for each cubic metre, while those who use more pay higher block prices for the additional cubic metres. We calculate this tier progressively – each cubic metre counts at the price of the block it falls into, rather than the entire monthly consumption being charged at the price of the highest block reached. This is expressly our own interpretation: the legal text doesn't state explicitly whether the tiering works progressively or as a cliff-edge rate, and we haven't found an official worked example that settles the question. We're therefore disclosing this reading rather than silently assuming it, and the calculator flags its result accordingly.

Another component of your water bill – the share that your municipality or your water supplier itself charges for supply, meter rental and sewerage – is an input in the calculator, not a calculation. This share is structured so differently from one municipality to another that no reliable model can be built for the whole island. You read it directly from your latest water bill and enter it into the calculator. If your finca isn't connected to the public network, additional questions come into play — for that, the guides Water supply for the finca and Water restrictions on Mallorca are available.Water supply for the fincaandWater restrictions on Mallorcaare available.

What the calculator can't do

For a few larger municipalities – including Palma, Marratxí and Sóller – the rubbish fee for individual flats can't be verified in the official gazette. Palma and Marratxí have not published their currently applicable rates there in full text for years, and Sóller's bylaw calculates with a zone-dependent factor that the bylaw itself does not specify numerically. For these municipalities, the calculator therefore shows neither an amount nor a range – it tells you this openly, rather than estimating a figure that can't be verified. In these cases, the reliable route is via your own fee notice, via cartero virtual – the digital mailbox of the ATIB, the Balearic tax authority (Spanish Agencia Tributaria de las Illes Balears) – or via a direct enquiry to the Ayuntamiento, the municipal administration.

Vado: the driveway

A Vado is the permit to drive a vehicle across the pavement to a driveway or garage – without it, this is strictly speaking an unauthorised use of the public pavement. Each municipality also regulates the Vado entirely on its own, either in its own bylaw or as part of a combined ordinance. The rates for it are hardly ever published in full text in the official gazette – unlike the rubbish fee, there is usually no publicly accessible table here. That's why this calculator doesn't calculate the Vado with its own figure; you can only find out the cost reliably directly from the Ayuntamiento or via its Seu electrònica, the municipality's electronic citizen portal. Anyone making structural changes at the same time will find the permit questions in the guide Pergola and carport on MallorcaPergola and carport on Mallorca.

Special cases

With the canon de saneamiento, there are several reductions that have nothing to do with your personal consumption: for zones where a treatment plant is not yet in operation, for households with low income, for particularly high usage-water shares, and for historic gardens. Whether one of these reductions applies to your property is checked by the responsible authority on a case-by-case basis – the calculator merely points out where they might be relevant. For the rubbish fee, holiday rentals in some municipalities are assessed differently: instead of by floor area or dwelling, the fee is calculated per place on the rental licence, so that the number of approved guests directly affects the fee. And finally, owners' associations with only one shared water meter are a special case: the calculator assumes one meter per dwelling, whereas a community with a single meter usually splits the canon among the owners itself – exactly how is generally regulated by the community, not by the municipality.

Deadlines, notices and payment

There's no single deadline for the whole island: each municipality sets its own payment window for the waste fee, and the water supplier also invoices according to its own schedule. Notices and invoices now usually reach you digitally via cartero virtual, provided you're registered there – if not, you'll continue to receive post at the address held in the cadastre. Payment is usually made by direct debit or via Bizum, the widely used mobile payment service in Spain. Important for owners who don't live on the island permanently: whether or not you're registered in the padrón, the municipality's residents' register, makes no difference to your liability to pay. Who owes the fee is determined by the respective bylaw – for rented properties, many municipalities name the occupant as the debtor and the owner as the substitute debtor — anyone letting long-term is best advised to settle this in the tenancy agreement, see Long-term rental on Mallorca, so that the notice ultimately ends up with the owner if no one else pays.

Legal basis and status

The canon de saneamiento is based on Decreto Legislativo 1/2016, the consolidated text (Texto Refundido) of Ley 9/1991. The fact that a municipal fee bylaw only takes effect once its final resolution has been published in the official gazette follows from Article 17.4 of Real Decreto Legislativo 2/2004, the Ley de Haciendas Locales – which is why we check for each municipality whether exactly this evidence exists before a figure is included in our register. The requirement that waste fees must cover their own costs and be shown separately is set out in Article 11 of Ley 7/2022. And whether, and at what rate, VAT applies to individual items is governed by Ley 37/1992 – a question the calculator only answers with a fixed rate where an approved source explicitly states this, and otherwise leaves open. The legal status on which the calculator is based is shown directly above it: it comes from our continuously maintained register of official sources, not from a one-off piece of research.

When was Palma’s waste charge due in 2026?

The voluntary payment period for the City of Palma’s waste treatment charge (TRSU) ran from 16 March to 1 June 2026. After the deadline, the ATIB may impose a late-payment surcharge and, where applicable, interest and costs. Payment dates for municipal charges collected by the ATIB are listed in the ATIB tax calendar; check which charge appears on your notice there too.

Not legal or tax advice.

Most common mistakes

• Never checked the cadastral value: Many people accept the notice without knowing what it's based on — yet the Valor Catastral is often the real lever.
• Confusing the waste fee with the property tax: Both come from the municipality, but run via separate notices and, in some cases, separate payment windows.
• Not registered with cartero virtual: Without the digital mailbox, owners abroad miss deadlines because paper post arrives late or not at all.
• Nothing arranged when letting the property: If the tenant doesn't pay the waste fee, the notice ultimately ends up with the owner anyway.
• Ignoring the vado fee: Anyone using a driveway without a valid permit, or not paying the ongoing fee, risks a complaint from the municipality.
• Multiple municipalities, no overview: With properties in different Ayuntamientos, a single notice can easily get overlooked.

What happens if you don't pay

Outstanding municipal charges initially lead to a reminder procedure and, further down the line, to enforcement by the responsible Recaudación — for many municipalities this is handled by the ATIB. Outstanding items also come to light when selling, because buyers and the notary in practice check whether the ongoing charges have been paid.

Checklist

• Know your property's cadastral value and check it occasionally.
• Be registered in the ATIB's cartero virtual.
• Have a direct debit mandate set up for the rubbish fee and the property tax.
• Know who supplies your water — the municipality or a utility provider.
• If you have a driveway: have the Vado permit and ongoing fee clarified with the municipality.
• If renting out: have it settled in the tenancy agreement who bears the rubbish fee.

What you can do next

If the property tax seems too high to you, it's worth taking a look at the reductions on IBI; if you sell later, the municipal Plusvalía comes into play as well, which has nothing to do with the ongoing charges.

The IBI property tax is deliberately left out of this page — it has its own calculator, which you can find in the guide to IBI tax in Spain. If you rent out your holiday property, the rubbish fee, water and Vado belong in your overall calculation of the running costs of a holiday property. And if you rent out long-term instead of to holiday guests, it's worth taking a look at the guide to the utility costs of a rental flat in Spain, which clarifies which of these items you as a landlord can pass on to your tenants.