Years of Unfiled Modelo 210: What Really Happens and How to Fix It
Almost every week someone writes to us with the same sentence: they bought a flat in Torrevieja, Orihuela Costa or Dénia years ago, nobody at the notary mentioned an annual tax return, and they have just discovered the modelo 210. The fear that follows is usually far larger than the debt. The Spanish system draws a very sharp line between a taxpayer who puts their own house in order and one whom the Tax Agency has to chase, and the line is worth real money: on one side there is a surcharge measured in single-digit percentages of a small annual tax, on the other a penalty regime that starts at half the tax and runs interest from the original deadline. The limitation period closes the oldest years for good after four. This guide walks through what you owed, what the surcharge actually costs with the arithmetic written out, which years you genuinely have to regularise, what changes if a letter arrives first, and the order in which to do the work.
Quick answer
Nothing dramatic happens if you file first. Filing your missing modelo 210 returns voluntarily, before the AEAT writes to you, carries no penalty: only the article 27 surcharge, which is 1% plus 1% for each full month late, or a flat 15% plus interest once twelve months have passed, reduced by 25% if you pay on time. Only four years stay open.
Reviewed by
Valery Grinkevich
Licensed economist · tax adviser · 20+ years of experience · Torrevieja, Costa Blanca
Key takeaways
- What went unfiled is deemed property income: a presumed rent charged simply for owning a Spanish home that is not let (art. 24.5 TRLIRNR, which sends you to art. 87 of the repealed 2004 IRPF text — the live rule is art. 85 of Ley 35/2006). An empty flat still generates it.
- File before any demand and there is no penalty at all. Article 191.1 LGT expressly excludes tax that is regularised under article 27, so the only cost is the surcharge plus, past twelve months, interest.
- The surcharge is 1% plus 1% for each full month of delay, and a flat 15% once twelve months have elapsed, with late-payment interest running only from month thirteen (art. 27.2). Pay on time and 25% of the surcharge is knocked off (art. 27.5).
- Only four years are open. The right to assess prescribes four years after the filing deadline expired (arts. 66.a and 67.1 LGT), so a 2026 clean-up typically covers 2021 to 2024 and everything older is closed.
- If a demand lands first, the surcharge route disappears: a minor infringement is fined at 50% of the unpaid tax (art. 191.2), reducible by 30% for agreement and a further 40% for prompt payment (arts. 188.1.b and 188.3), with interest from the original deadline.
On this page
- What you failed to file, and why an empty flat is taxed at all
- How small the annual tax usually is
- The line that decides everything: before or after the demand
- The article 27 surcharges, with the arithmetic written out
- Late-payment interest: how it works and where the rate comes from
- Four years, and not one more: the limitation period
- A full worked example: four years regularised in October 2026
- If the demand arrives first: infringements, fines and reductions
- How the regularisation is actually done
- When the total stings: deferral and instalments
- The aggravated cases: an undeclared sale, an undeclared let
- How the AEAT finds out that you never filed
- A letter has already arrived: what kind, and what to do
- How to regularise years of unfiled modelo 210 before the AEAT writes to you
- Frequently asked questions
What you failed to file, and why an empty flat is taxed at all
The obligation nobody explained at the notary is the non-resident income tax on deemed property income. Article 24.5 of the consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act (Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004) says that, for non-resident individuals, the income imputed on real estate located in Spain is determined under the rules of the personal income tax. Article 27.1.c) of the same text fixes the accrual date at 31 December of each year, and article 28.1 makes filing and paying the taxpayer’s own duty: there is no withholding agent, no annual notice, nothing that arrives in the post. The tax exists because you own the property, and the return exists because you are the one who has to produce it.
There is a trap in the cross-reference itself. Article 24.5 still points to article 87 of the 2004 consolidated personal income tax text, approved by Real Decreto Legislativo 3/2004, which was repealed when Ley 35/2006 came into force. The rule actually applied today is article 85 of Ley 35/2006, which carries the same content under a new number. Owners who look up the old reference find a dead article and conclude that the obligation vanished; it did not. Article 85.1 imputes as income 2% of the cadastral value of an urban property that is not the taxpayer’s main home, is not used in a business and does not generate rental income, apportioned by the number of days in the tax period.
The reduced rate of 1.1% applies where the cadastral values of the municipality were revised, modified or fixed through a general collective valuation procedure that took effect in the tax period or in the previous ten tax periods, and also where the property has no cadastral value or none has been notified to the owner, in which case the 1.1% is applied to half of the greater of the value verified for other taxes and the acquisition price. Which of the two percentages applies to a flat in Alicante or a villa in Jávea is therefore a question about that municipality’s valuation history, not a matter of choice, and it is the single most common error in returns that owners prepare themselves.
Tip
The imputation is a presumed income, not a charge on money received. A property that stayed empty all year, that you used yourself for two weeks, or that a relative occupied rent-free, produces exactly the same return.
How small the annual tax usually is
Before worrying about surcharges it is worth sizing the debt, because the number is almost always smaller than the fear attached to it. The taxable base is the percentage of article 85.1 of Ley 35/2006 applied to the cadastral value that appears on your IBI receipt — the total cadastral value, land plus building, not the market price and not what you paid. The rate then comes from article 25.1.a) of the consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act: 19% for residents of another EU member state, and of an EEA state with effective exchange of tax information, and 24% for everyone else. Since 2021 that puts British owners in the 24% bracket and Dutch, German, Belgian, Swedish and Polish owners in the 19% one.
Take a Torrevieja apartment with a cadastral value of 90,000 euros in a municipality whose values have not been revised within the last ten periods. The base is 2% of 90,000, that is 1,800 euros. At 19% the tax is 342 euros for the whole year; at 24% it is 432 euros. Split between two spouses who own the flat half and half, each files a return for 171 euros or 216 euros. Those are the figures that four or five years of silence multiply, and they are why the great majority of these cases end in a total well under two thousand euros including surcharges.
Two corrections make the number smaller still in specific situations. If the municipality did carry out a general revision that took effect within the last ten tax periods, the percentage drops to 1.1% and the tax falls by nearly half. And if you did not own the property for the whole year, the imputation is apportioned by days, so the year of purchase and the year of sale are partial years. Neither correction changes the duty to file; both change what you pay.
Example
Cadastral value 90,000 euros, no revision in the last ten periods, EU resident owner: 2% of 90,000 = 1,800 euros of base, taxed at 19% = 342 euros for the year. The same flat owned 50/50 by a couple produces two returns of 171 euros each.
The line that decides everything: before or after the demand
Spanish tax law treats the same omission in two radically different ways depending on who moves first. If you file the missing returns on your own initiative, article 27.1 of Ley 58/2003, the General Tax Act, applies: what you owe is a surcharge for late filing without a prior demand, which is an accessory obligation, not a sanction (art. 25.1). If the Tax Agency acts first, article 27 is off the table and the penalty regime of articles 191 and following opens instead, on top of the tax and the interest.
The law defines with precision what counts as a prior demand. Article 27.1, second paragraph, treats as a prior demand any administrative action, formally notified to the taxpayer, aimed at the recognition, regularisation, verification, inspection, securing or assessment of the tax debt. Two things follow. First, a letter that merely tells you the AEAT holds information about a Spanish property, without naming a tax and a period and without asking anything of you, is not necessarily a demand. Second, and more importantly, the moment a genuine demand is formally notified the cheap route closes for the tax and periods it covers — which is why the calendar matters more than the amount.
Article 191.1 makes the consequence explicit rather than leaving it to interpretation: failing to pay the tax due under a correct self-assessment is an infringement, except where the position is regularised in accordance with article 27. Voluntary regularisation does not merely mitigate the penalty; it removes the infringement. That single sentence is the reason every adviser in this field says the same thing to an owner with unfiled years: the expensive mistake is not the years of silence, it is waiting one more month after you find out.
Watch out
Once a demand covering the modelo 210 for a given year is formally notified, no later filing for that year can recover the article 27 route. If a letter has arrived, read the next-to-last section before doing anything else.
The article 27 surcharges, with the arithmetic written out
Article 27.2 of the General Tax Act, in the wording given by Ley 11/2021, sets the surcharge at 1% plus a further 1% for each full month of delay, counted from the end of the filing period. A return filed within the first month after the deadline therefore carries 1%; two full months late carries 3%; nine full months late carries 10%. The surcharge is calculated on the amount to pay resulting from the self-assessment, it excludes any penalty that could have been demanded, and during those first twelve months no late-payment interest is charged at all.
Once more than twelve months have elapsed since the end of the filing period, the scale stops climbing and becomes a flat 15%. From that point late-payment interest is added, running from the day after the twelve-month mark until the return is actually filed. This is the structural reason a five-year clean-up is not five times worse than a one-year one: every year more than twelve months late carries the same 15%, and only the interest keeps growing.
Article 27.5 then reduces the surcharge by 25%, provided two payments happen on time: the debt resulting from the late self-assessment is paid when you file it, or under a deferral agreement secured by a bank guarantee or surety insurance requested at that moment, and the remaining 75% of the surcharge is paid within the period of article 62.2, which opens when the AEAT notifies the surcharge assessment. Article 62.2 gives you until the 20th of the following month if the notice arrives between the 1st and the 15th, and until the 5th of the second following month if it arrives between the 16th and the end of the month. Miss either payment and the reduction is demanded back with no further formality.
Late-payment interest: how it works and where the rate comes from
Late-payment interest under article 26 of the General Tax Act is not a punishment either; it is the price of the delay. Article 26.1 says it is payable when a self-assessment showing tax to pay is filed after the statutory deadline, that it needs no prior demand from the administration, and that it does not require any culpable delay on the taxpayer’s part. Article 26.3 fixes the base: the amount not paid on time, for as long as the delay lasts.
For voluntary regularisation the key is article 26.2.b) read with article 27.2. Interest is expressly displaced for late filings without a prior demand during the first twelve months; only beyond that point does it start to run, and it runs from the day after the twelve-month mark to the day the return is filed. In the penalty scenario the exclusion does not apply and interest runs from the day after the original filing deadline, which on a five-year-old omission is a materially different number.
The rate is set by law, not by the tax office, and it changes from year to year. Article 26.6 provides that the late-payment interest is the legal interest rate on money in force during the period, increased by 25%, unless the annual General State Budget Act sets a different figure — which it frequently does. That is why this guide quotes no percentage: the correct rate for each calendar year of your delay is the one published for that year, and the AEAT applies the corresponding rate to each stretch of the period when it issues the interest assessment. Ask for the figures used, and check them against the Budget Act for each year.
Four years, and not one more: the limitation period
This is the part frightened owners almost never know. Article 66.a) of the General Tax Act gives the administration four years to determine the tax debt by assessment, and article 67.1 starts that clock the day after the statutory filing period ends. It is not four years from the accrual, and not four years from when the AEAT found out; it is four years from the end of the window in which you should have filed. Article 68 lists what interrupts it — essentially, any formally notified action by the administration aimed at the tax, and any action by the taxpayer relating to that tax.
Applied to deemed property income the result is clean. The imputation for a given year accrues on 31 December of that year (art. 27.1.c) TRLIRNR) and the filing window closes at the end of the following calendar year, so the four-year clock on the 2020 imputation ran out at the very beginning of 2026, and the 2021 imputation is open until the end of 2026. An owner who never filed anything and regularises during 2026 is dealing with 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 — four returns per property and per owner — while 2025 is not yet late at all and is simply filed within its own window.
Two cautions. Filing a late return for a year is an act relating to that tax, so the years you touch are years whose clocks restart for the administration’s power to check them; that is normal and it is not a reason to leave them unfiled. And limitation is about the power to assess, not about the property: a prescribed year cannot be assessed, but the acquisition value recorded in an old deed still matters when you eventually sell, so keep the paperwork whatever the tax position.
Tip
Count the open years before you count the money. Owners routinely arrive convinced they owe fifteen years of tax and leave with four returns, because everything older is legally closed.
A full worked example: four years regularised in October 2026
Take the Torrevieja flat above: cadastral value 90,000 euros, no general revision in the last ten periods, a single owner resident in the European Union, nothing ever filed. The annual tax is 342 euros. The owner discovers the problem and files everything on 15 October 2026, before any letter from the AEAT. The table sets out each year: the deadline that was missed, the number of full months of delay counted from that deadline to the filing date, the surcharge that article 27.2 produces, the same surcharge after the 25% reduction of article 27.5, and whether interest runs.
Three of the four open years are more than twelve months late, so each carries the flat 15%: 51.30 euros on a 342-euro tax, reduced to 38.48 euros. The 2024 return, whose window closed on 31 December 2025, was nine full months late on 15 October 2026, so its surcharge is 1% plus 9%, that is 10% or 34.20 euros, reduced to 25.65 euros, with no interest at all because twelve months had not passed. The 2025 return is not late: its window runs to 31 December 2026.
The totals are the point of the exercise. Four years of tax come to 1,368 euros. The gross surcharges come to 188.10 euros, and 141.08 euros after the reduction. Late-payment interest is due only on the 2021, 2022 and 2023 years, and only from the thirteenth month of each, which on these amounts is measured in tens of euros rather than hundreds. The whole regularisation lands around 1,500 euros plus interest — for four years of an obligation the owner never knew existed.
If the demand arrives first: infringements, fines and reductions
Where the AEAT acts before you do, the tax and the interest are still due and a penalty procedure is opened alongside. The relevant infringement is article 191.1: failing to pay, within the statutory period, all or part of the tax debt that should have resulted from a correct self-assessment. The base of the penalty is the amount not paid. Article 191.2 classifies the infringement as minor where that base is 3,000 euros or less, or where it is higher but there is no concealment, and sets the fine at 50% of the base. Concealment, false invoices and the other circumstances of articles 191.3 and 191.4 move the infringement to serious or very serious, with fines from 50% to 100% and from 100% to 150%; a straightforward unfiled deemed-income return does not normally get there.
There is a separate, much smaller infringement for returns that are late but cause no loss to the Treasury. Article 198.1 fines the failure to file a return in time, where no economic loss to the Treasury has occurred or can occur, at a fixed 200 euros, and article 198.2 halves that to 100 euros where the return is filed late without a prior demand. This is the article that governs nil returns — for instance an EU-resident landlord whose deductible expenses cancel the rent — and it is why a nil year is worth filing rather than ignoring.
The reductions of article 188 soften the outcome, and their percentages changed in 2021, so the figures repeated on many websites are out of date. Article 188.1.b) reduces the fine by 30% where the taxpayer agrees with the assessment, and article 188.1.a) by 65% in the case of a settlement agreement under article 155. Article 188.3 then reduces what remains by a further 40% if the balance is paid within the article 62.2 period, or under a secured deferral requested in time, and provided no appeal or claim is filed against the assessment or the penalty. On the 342-euro year of our example, a 50% fine is 171 euros; 30% off leaves 119.70 euros; 40% off that leaves 71.82 euros — still nearly double the 38.48-euro surcharge, and this time with interest running from the original deadline.
Watch out
The article 188 reductions are conditional. Appeal the assessment or the penalty after taking the 30% and the 40%, and the amounts reduced are demanded back; the trade-off between arguing and paying has to be made before, not after.
How the regularisation is actually done
The unit of work is one modelo 210 per tax year, per property and per taxpayer. Deemed income is imputed to the owners under article 85.2 of Ley 35/2006, which refers to the attribution rules of article 11.3, so each co-owner declares their own share and files their own return: a couple owning one flat in Orihuela Costa half and half do not file a joint return, they file two, each on half of the cadastral value, each year. Where there is a usufruct, article 85.2 imputes to the holder of the right of enjoyment the income that would correspond to the owner, so the usufructuary files and the bare owner does not.
Order matters less than completeness, but there is a sensible sequence: establish which years are open under article 66, gather the cadastral value applicable to each of those years from the IBI receipts or from the Catastro, confirm whether the municipality had a general revision in the relevant window, decide the rate by residence, and then file year by year from the oldest open year to the most recent. Each late self-assessment must expressly identify the tax period it relates to and contain only data for that period — article 27.4 makes that a condition for the surcharge regime to apply at all, so bundling several years into one return destroys the very benefit you are after.
What you need in hand is modest: your NIE, the cadastral reference and the cadastral value for each year, the purchase deed if any year is partial, a Spanish or SEPA bank account or a card, and a certificate of tax residence if you rely on the 19% rate as an EU or EEA resident. Filing is electronic and can be done from abroad. Deadlines for returns that are still in time are a subject of their own, and the sibling calendar guide sets out every window — including the change that moves the deemed-income period for 2026 accruals to 1 April to 31 December of the following year, and rental returns with tax to pay to the first twenty days of April.
When the total stings: deferral and instalments
Four or five years of tax, surcharges and interest arriving in one week is uncomfortable even when the annual figure is small, and the law provides for it. Article 65.1 of the General Tax Act allows debts in the voluntary or the enforcement period to be deferred or paid in instalments on the taxpayer’s application, where their economic and financial situation temporarily prevents payment in time. Article 65.2 lists the debts that cannot be deferred — withheld amounts, stamp duty, certain corporate instalments — and none of them covers a non-resident’s own modelo 210.
The application is made when you file, or at least before the voluntary payment period ends. Article 65.5 gives that timing real value: an application filed in the voluntary period prevents the enforcement period from starting, although late-payment interest keeps accruing. Articles 44 to 52 of the General Collection Regulation, approved by Real Decreto 939/2005, govern the procedure, the content of the application and the guarantees, and article 82.2.a) of the General Tax Act allows the taxpayer to be excused from providing a guarantee where the debt is below the amount fixed in the tax rules — a threshold set by ministerial order and revised from time to time, so check the figure in force rather than assuming last year’s.
Deferral interacts with the surcharge reduction in a way that is easy to get wrong. Article 27.5 preserves the 25% reduction where payment is made under a deferral or instalment agreement, but only where that agreement is secured by a bank guarantee or surety insurance and was requested when the late return was filed or before the article 62.2 period expired. A plain unsecured instalment plan keeps the debt manageable but loses the reduction. Which of the two is better depends on the amounts, and it is worth doing the arithmetic before applying.
The aggravated cases: an undeclared sale, an undeclared let
Some owners discover the modelo 210 problem only when they sell, and by then a second, larger omission may exist. The gain on a sale by a non-resident is taxed at 19% under article 25.1.f).3 of the consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act, and that rate applies to every non-resident regardless of country of residence. The buyer must withhold 3% of the price and pay it in under article 25.2, and that withholding is a payment on account of the seller’s tax: it reduces the amount to pay and therefore the base of any surcharge, and where it exceeds the tax the difference is refundable. The same article 25.2 adds that, if the withholding was not paid in, the transferred property is charged with the lesser of that withholding and the tax due — the buyer’s problem as well as the seller’s.
That 3% is also the reason a sale is the least concealable event in the whole system. The buyer’s modelo 211 identifies the seller, the property and the price, and it reaches the AEAT within a month of the deed. A seller who never filed the annual deemed-income returns has therefore just handed the administration a dated, documented trail leading to years of imputation on a property whose ownership dates are on the deed. Regularising the imputed years before or at the same time as declaring the gain is not a formality; it is what keeps the whole file inside article 27.
Undeclared rental income is the other aggravated case, and it differs in degree rather than in kind. Rental income is taxed on the gross amount under article 24.1, except that residents of an EU member state, and of an EEA state with effective exchange of information, may deduct expenses directly and inseparably linked to the Spanish income under article 24.6 — mortgage interest, IBI, community fees, insurance, repairs, the applicable depreciation. The tax per year is larger than an imputation, so the surcharges are larger in absolute terms; the mechanism, the four-year limit and the reductions are identical. Note also that the deemed income and the rental income coexist within one year: the days let are declared as rent, the remaining days as imputation.
Example
A flat let for four months and empty for eight generates two obligations in the same year: a rental return for the months let, and a deemed-income return apportioned over the remaining days under article 85.1 of Ley 35/2006. Filing only one of the two leaves the other unfiled.
How the AEAT finds out that you never filed
The most common reason owners delay is a quiet hope that nobody knows. They do. The Cadastre records the ownership, the cadastral reference and the cadastral value of every property in Spain, and it is the same register that produces the IBI bill the owner has been paying for years; the AEAT can cross-check a NIE against cadastral ownership without asking anyone. Article 93.1 of the General Tax Act obliges every natural or legal person to supply the tax authorities with information with tax relevance derived from their dealings with third parties, and article 94 extends the duty to public authorities, which includes the Cadastre and the land registry.
On top of that base layer sit several targeted flows. A sale generates the buyer’s modelo 211 within a month of the deed. Notaries and registrars report property transactions. Digital platforms that intermediate short-term lets report their sellers under article 54 ter of the General Regulation on tax management and inspection actions, approved by Real Decreto 1065/2007, which transposes Council Directive (EU) 2021/514 amending Directive 2011/16/EU on administrative cooperation, with the due-diligence rules of Real Decreto 117/2024. The information covers, expressly, the letting of immovable property located in a member state.
Finally there is automatic exchange between tax administrations, both of financial account information and, under the same administrative cooperation framework, of other categories of income and assets. The practical consequence is that a non-resident with a Spanish property, a Spanish bank account and a foreign tax residence is visible from several directions at once. None of this makes a demand inevitable, and the AEAT does not open a file on every unfiled 342-euro return — but planning on invisibility is planning on the one variable you do not control.
A letter has already arrived: what kind, and what to do
Not every envelope from the AEAT is the same thing, and the difference decides whether article 27 is still available. An informative communication tells you that the administration holds data about a property and invites you to check your position; it may not, by itself, meet the definition of a prior demand in article 27.1, which requires an action aimed at the recognition, regularisation, verification, inspection, securing or assessment of the tax debt. A requerimiento asks you for specific documents or explanations about an identified tax and period, and it does meet it. A propuesta de liquidación goes further: it states the tax the administration believes you owe and opens a hearing before assessing.
The hearing deadlines are short and they are worth diarising the day the letter arrives. In a limited verification procedure the administration must notify the proposed assessment so that you can make representations, under article 138.3 of the General Tax Act, and article 164.4 of the General Regulation approved by Real Decreto 1065/2007 sets that window at ten days from the day after notification. In the penalty procedure the proposed decision is notified with the file made available and a period of fifteen days to make representations and produce evidence, under article 210.4, or article 210.5 where the proposal comes with the opening decision itself.
Once an assessment or a penalty is notified, there are two routes and one month for each. The optional recurso de reposición goes back to the office that issued the act and must be lodged within one month from the day after notification, under article 223.1, and it has to come before any economic-administrative claim (art. 222.2). The reclamación económico-administrativa before the regional or central tribunal is also lodged within one month from the day after notification, under article 235.1. Neither suspends payment automatically unless the debt is guaranteed. If your letter is a demand covering years you had intended to regularise voluntarily, the remaining years it does not cover are still inside article 27 — file those now and deal with the demanded years separately.
Tip
Note the notification date on the envelope or on the electronic notice before anything else. Every deadline in this section — ten days, fifteen days, one month — is counted from the day after that date, and a missed hearing is far more expensive than a bad argument.
Step-by-step
How to regularise years of unfiled modelo 210 before the AEAT writes to you
Check whether a demand has already arrived
Look through the post and any electronic notifications for anything from the AEAT naming the non-resident income tax and a period. A formally notified action aimed at regularising or assessing the debt is a prior demand under article 27.1 and closes the surcharge route for the years it covers.
List the open years
Count four years back from the end of each filing period under articles 66.a) and 67.1 of the General Tax Act. Deemed income for a year is filed during the following year, so a 2026 clean-up typically opens 2021 to 2024, with 2025 still in time.
Gather the cadastral value for each of those years
Take the total cadastral value from the IBI receipt for each year, or from the Catastro electronic office. Check whether the municipality carried out a general valuation revision effective in the year or the previous ten, which drops the percentage from 2% to 1.1%.
Fix the rate by residence
Apply 19% if you are resident in an EU member state, or in an EEA state with effective exchange of tax information; 24% otherwise, under article 25.1.a) of the consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act. Obtain a certificate of tax residence if you rely on the lower rate.
Compute each year separately
Percentage of the cadastral value, apportioned by days of ownership and by your ownership share, times the rate. Two co-owners produce two returns per year and per property, each on their own share.
File one modelo 210 per year, per property and per owner
Each late self-assessment must identify its tax period expressly and contain only data for that period, under article 27.4; bundling years into one return forfeits the surcharge regime. File electronically, oldest open year first.
Pay when you file, or apply for a deferral at the same time
Paying at the moment of filing is a condition of the 25% reduction of article 27.5. If the total is heavy, apply for deferral under article 65 of the General Tax Act with the application made in the voluntary period, and check whether a guarantee is required.
Wait for the surcharge assessment and pay the balance on time
The AEAT will later notify an assessment of the surcharge and any interest. Pay the remaining 75% within the period of article 62.2 opened by that notice to keep the reduction, and keep every receipt for at least four years.
| Tax year | Filing deadline missed | Tax due | Full months late | Surcharge (art. 27.2) | After the 25% reduction (art. 27.5) | Late-payment interest (art. 26) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 31 December 2022 | 342 € | 45 | 15% = 51.30 € | 38.48 € | From 1 January 2024 |
| 2022 | 31 December 2023 | 342 € | 33 | 15% = 51.30 € | 38.48 € | From 1 January 2025 |
| 2023 | 31 December 2024 | 342 € | 21 | 15% = 51.30 € | 38.48 € | From 1 January 2026 |
| 2024 | 31 December 2025 | 342 € | 9 | 1% + 9% = 34.20 € | 25.65 € | None |
| 2025 | 31 December 2026 | 342 € | Still in time | None | None | None |
| Four open years | — | 1,368 € | — | 188.10 € | 141.08 € | Only on 2021-2023 |
| You file first, with no prior demand | The AEAT demands first | |
|---|---|---|
| Legal basis | Art. 27 LGT: surcharge for late filing without prior demand | Arts. 191 and following LGT: penalty regime |
| Cost on the tax | Flat 15% past twelve months (1% + 1% per full month before that) | Minor infringement: proportional fine of 50% of the unpaid tax (art. 191.2) |
| Interest | None in the first twelve months; from month thirteen onwards | From the day after the original filing deadline (art. 26.2.b) |
| Reductions | 25% off the surcharge if the debt and the balance are paid on time (art. 27.5) | 30% for agreement, then 40% for prompt payment (arts. 188.1.b and 188.3) |
| Is there a penalty? | No — art. 191.1 excludes tax regularised under art. 27 | Yes, on top of the tax and the interest |
| Amount on the example | 51.30 € surcharge, 38.48 € after the reduction | 171 € fine, 71.82 € after both reductions |
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Will I be fined for the years I never filed the modelo 210?
Not if you file before the AEAT contacts you. Article 191.1 of the General Tax Act treats failing to pay as an infringement except where the position is regularised under article 27, so a voluntary late filing removes the infringement rather than merely reducing the fine. What you pay is the tax, the article 27 surcharge and, beyond twelve months, late-payment interest.
How many years back do I actually have to regularise?
Four. Article 66.a) of the General Tax Act gives the administration four years to assess, and article 67.1 counts them from the day after the filing period ended, so anything older is closed. For deemed property income regularised during 2026 that normally means the 2021 to 2024 years, with 2025 still inside its own filing window.
How much will it cost me to catch up?
The tax for the open years plus a surcharge of 1% and a further 1% per full month late, or a flat 15% for years more than twelve months late, reduced by 25% under article 27.5 if you pay on time. On a typical Costa Blanca flat with an annual tax around 342 euros, four late years produce roughly 1,368 euros of tax and about 141 euros of reduced surcharges, plus modest interest on the oldest years.
Does it change anything if the AEAT writes to me before I file?
Yes, and it is the single most expensive difference in this guide. A formally notified action aimed at recognising, regularising, verifying, inspecting, securing or assessing the debt is a prior demand under article 27.1, which closes the surcharge route for the tax and periods it covers and opens the penalty regime of articles 191 and following instead, with interest running from the original deadline.
Do I have to pay even though the property is empty and earns nothing?
Yes. The tax is on a presumed income, not on money received: article 24.5 of the consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act imputes income on Spanish real estate held by non-resident individuals, and article 85.1 of Ley 35/2006 quantifies it as 2% of the cadastral value, or 1.1% where the municipality carried out a general valuation revision effective in the tax period or the previous ten.
We own the flat jointly. Do we file one return or two?
Two, and one each per year and per property. Article 85.2 of Ley 35/2006 imputes the income to the owners under the attribution rules of article 11.3, so each co-owner is a separate taxpayer for their share and files their own modelo 210 on their proportion of the cadastral value. Filing a single joint return leaves the other half unfiled.
Can I pay in instalments if several years fall due at once?
Yes. Article 65.1 of the General Tax Act allows deferral or instalments on application where your financial situation temporarily prevents payment on time, with the procedure in articles 44 to 52 of the General Collection Regulation. Apply when you file: article 65.5 stops the enforcement period from starting, and article 82.2.a) allows the guarantee to be waived below a threshold fixed by ministerial order.
I sold the property and never declared the imputed income. What now?
Regularise the open imputed years and declare the gain, ideally together. The gain is taxed at 19% for every non-resident under article 25.1.f) of the consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act, and the buyer’s 3% withholding under article 25.2 is a payment on account that reduces what you pay — and, incidentally, a document that already told the AEAT you owned the property.
How would the AEAT even know I have a home in Spain?
Through the Cadastre first of all, which links your NIE to the property, the cadastral reference and the cadastral value that generates your IBI bill. Article 93 of the General Tax Act obliges third parties to report tax-relevant information and article 94 extends the duty to public bodies; platform lets are reported under article 54 ter of the regulation approved by Real Decreto 1065/2007, and tax administrations exchange information automatically.
Could this be a criminal tax offence?
Realistically no. The criminal offence against the Treasury requires an evaded amount far above anything a single home produces in annual deemed income, and it also requires intent, whereas the typical case here is an owner who was never told the obligation existed. What is at stake is tax, a surcharge or a fine, and interest.
I filed some years but got them wrong. What do I use?
A complementary self-assessment if the correction increases the tax to pay, under article 122.2 of the General Tax Act, which can be filed after the deadline as long as the administration’s right to assess has not prescribed. If the earlier return harmed you, article 120.3 lets you apply to rectify it, or file a corrective self-assessment where the rules for that tax require it.
Should I just wait for the years to prescribe instead of regularising?
No, because the years do not all prescribe at once and waiting exposes the whole file. Each year is closed four years after its own deadline, so waiting always leaves recent open years exposed, and if a demand lands in the meantime every open year loses the article 27 route at once and gains a penalty and interest from the original deadline.
Sources
- BOE — Ley 58/2003, General Tax Act (arts. 26, 27, 62, 65, 66, 67, 82, 122, 138, 188, 191, 198, 210, 223 and 235)
- BOE — Consolidated Non-Resident Income Tax Act, Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004 (arts. 24, 25, 27 and 28)
- BOE — Ley 35/2006, Personal Income Tax Act (arts. 11.3 and 85)
- BOE — Real Decreto 1065/2007, General Regulation on tax management and inspection (arts. 54 ter and 164.4)
- BOE — Real Decreto 939/2005, General Collection Regulation (arts. 44 to 52, deferral and instalments)
- BOE — Ley 11/2021 on measures against tax fraud (new wording of arts. 27 and 188)
- BOE — Orden EHA/3316/2010, modelo 210 (consolidated text, filing periods)
- AEAT — Non-resident income tax without permanent establishment: form and deadline
Last updated: 2026-09-10