An owner of a rental home must declare the income, generally, as income from real estate capital. Not 100% of them, since expenses related to rent, insurance and taxes can be deducted.
But, in addition, the Treasury has been allowing owners a 60% bonus on the total net rental income, as long as this represented the tenant’s habitual residence. For this reason, an owner ends up paying taxes on 40% of this, which does not happen, for example, with temporary or room rentals, which must be declared in their entirety.
The latest Housing law introduces new bonuses in stressed areas, some of which reach 90%. However, it generally reduces the bonus to 50%. While the autonomous communities decided whether or not to declare their municipalities as stressed residential market areas, it remained in doubt whether a reduction of 60% should be applied in this year’s income tax return, as always, or the bonuses between 50% and 90%, as dictated by the new law.
Contracts signed as of May 26, 2023 (day of entry into force of the law), in the income tax return for the year 2023, may apply the 60% reduction to the positive net return on real estate capital derived from rental of housing, as has traditionally been done.
Contracts signed prior to that date will continue to receive a 60% bonus as well.
For the fiscal year 2024 (and, therefore, in the income tax return issued in 2025), this percentage will be reduced to 50%, in general. Reductions of 60%, 70% and 90% may be applied to property contracts located in stressed areas and that meet the following requirements:
For now, Catalonia alone has officially declared 140 municipalities as stressed areas. Another 171 are in the process to be declared in the coming weeks or months.
As every year, the Treasury allocates real estate income to apartments that, at some point during the year, have been empty, not rented or occupied, not used for economic activities and, of course, not constituting the taxpayer’s habitual residence. To avoid them, it is as simple as putting the property on the rental market.
To calculate these imputed income, the Treasury takes into account the days of the year that the property has been empty, its cadastral value and a coefficient. To include them in the WEB Income, you must go to “Declaration sections”, “Economic data”, “Real estate…” and, for each property, indicate how many days it has been “At the disposal of its owners”.
