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Modelo 210: 23 December to direct debit, 31 December to file

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Every December the same avoidable mistake arrives with the deemed income return on a Spanish holiday home: the owner prepares modelo 210 in the last week of the year, ticks direct debit and finds the option gone. Two different dates close that return. The direct debit window shuts on 23 December; the filing period runs to 31 December. Eight days separate them, and article 12.6 of Orden EHA/3316/2010 is where they come from.

The short version

For deemed income on a Spanish home, the last day to set up a direct debit is 23 December, eight days before the 31 December filing deadline; after the 23rd the return can still be filed, but only paying by NRC or bank transfer.

Valery Grinkevich

Written by

Valery Grinkevich

Licensed economist · tax adviser · 20+ years of experience · Torrevieja, Costa Blanca

Two dates eight days apart, and only one of them is the deadline

Deemed income on a home kept for personal use, income type 02, accrues on 31 December under article 27 of Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004, and the return for the 2025 accrual can be filed at any point during 2026, up to and including 31 December. That is the deadline in the strict sense: the day after it, the return is late. Nothing about it moved in 2026, and 31 December 2026 falls on a Thursday, so no weekend extension applies.

The other date is a payment cut-off, not a filing deadline. Article 12.6 of Orden EHA/3316/2010, in its current wording, allows deemed income to be paid by direct debit only until 23 December, a Wednesday in 2026. The reason is mechanical rather than fiscal: the Agencia Tributaria passes the order to the bank, and the bank needs time to execute the charge before the period closes. A return prepared on 28 December is still perfectly in time; it simply cannot be paid that way any more.

Direct debit, NRC and transfer: three routes, three different cut-offs

To domiciliar is to instruct the AEAT to have the tax charged to a bank account, so that filing and payment become a single act. Since February 2024 that account no longer has to sit inside the network of Spanish collaborating entities: a SEPA account elsewhere is accepted, which is exactly why the option matters to an owner who closed the Spanish account after the purchase, or never opened one.

The NRC works the other way round: a Spanish collaborating bank charges the amount and returns a complete reference number that the return then quotes, which in practice presupposes an account with such a bank. Failing both routes, the return is filed online with the acknowledgement of debt option and paid by transfer from abroad, using the payment identifier the system generates, valid for thirty days and always in euros. Those two stay open until the last day of the filing period; only the direct debit closes on the 23rd.

The sale return can never be direct-debited at all

The return after selling a Spanish property, income type 28, is the exception with no cut-off to memorise, because the option does not exist for it. It is filed in the three months that begin once the one month for the buyer’s modelo 211 has expired, and it is paid by NRC or by transfer from abroad whatever the result. A seller building a December plan around the 23rd is planning around a rule that does not apply to that return.

Rental income has its own windows, and they are not December ones. For rent accrued in 2025 and grouped into a single annual return, the direct debit period closed on 15 January 2026. For rent accrued from 2026 onwards, article 12.6 places it between 1 and 15 April of the following year, grouped or separate. Deemed income is the only one with a December debit window, which is part of why the dates get mixed up.

What crossing 31 December actually costs

Filing late on your own initiative, before the AEAT writes, carries no penalty. Article 27.2 of Ley 58/2003 applies a surcharge of 1% plus a further 1% for each complete month of delay, with no late-payment interest during the first twelve months. Past twelve months the surcharge becomes a flat 15% and interest is added on top. Article 27.5 takes 25% off the surcharge when the debt and the reduced surcharge are paid within the period the AEAT gives.

The arithmetic matters less than the sequence. That cheap route exists only while the initiative is yours: a prior demand from the Agencia closes it and opens a penalty procedure instead. Our guide on regularising a late modelo 210 sets out the full scale and the four-year limitation period. The point here is narrower: missing 23 December costs you a payment method, and missing 31 December costs you money.

A home owned half each is two returns, not one

Deemed income cannot be grouped between owners. A couple who own one flat in Torrevieja fifty-fifty file two modelo 210 returns, each declaring half of the cadastral value, and each with its own payment. Both share the same 31 December deadline and the same 23 December debit cut-off, and filing only one of them produces a surcharge on that half of the tax.

This is the December mistake with the longest tail, because the missing half usually goes unnoticed for years. If the second return has never been filed, count the accruals still open — deemed income accrues on 31 December of each year — and regularise them before a letter arrives rather than after it.

From the 2026 accrual, December shares the calendar with April

Orden HAC/623/2026, of 12 June, published in the BOE of 23 June 2026 and in force since the 24th, rewrote article 5 of Orden EHA/3316/2010. Under its single final provision the new rule applies for the first time to deemed income accrued in 2026: from that accrual onwards the return is filed between 1 April and 31 December of the following year, and it can be direct-debited between 1 April and 23 December.

So the December cut-off survives the reform, but the window no longer opens in January. The 2026 deemed income cannot be filed before 1 April 2027, and an owner used to dealing with it in the first days of the year will find the period has not started. Our separate post on that April opening covers the other half of the change, and the modelo 210 deadlines guide carries the full calendar for both regimes.

What to do

If you are filing deemed income for 2025 and want it charged to your account, order the direct debit by 23 December 2026. If you are reading this after that date, file before 31 December anyway and pay by NRC or by transfer from abroad with the thirty-day payment identifier.

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