The taxman wants some of your Spanish rental income

If you live in Britain but own a home abroad which you rent out you can’t fail to have seen the recent headlines like this one:

Taxman pursues Britons hiding holiday rent on overseas homes

Apparently the Revenue have set up a special unit to go after “the rich” (defined as those paying 50% tax i.e. earning over £150,000 pa) and one of their tasks is to recover £560 million in unpaid tax on foreign rental income.

With the stern promise that there is “no hiding place for tax cheats” they will look at things like land registers and letting adverts to catch people earning income from their properties but not declaring it.

I don’t know how worried I would be if I was renting out my holiday home and hadn’t declared the tax. These kind of campaigns have been launched before and you sometimes get the impression its more about the publicity and scary newspaper headlines than anything of real substance.

It also wasn’t abundantly clear whether the campaign is purely about the holiday homes of “the rich” or whether it is anyone with a holiday home that is under threat.

By coincidence I got a reminder of how brutal the Spanish taxman can be when it comes to foreigners (and locals to be fair) when it comes to undeclared rental income. I got an email from someone asking what they could do about €6,000 that the Spanish tax office (la Agencia Tributaria) had taken from his bank account, with no warning or even a letter to say they had done it.

It turned out he had two holiday homes and he let out one through an agency for several years without declaring a cent for tax purposes, not even completing the non resident tax return which surely every Spanish property owner knows about by now (if you don't see this post 'Tis the Season to Pay Spanish Taxes).

We have to assume that the rental agency were asked for their records by the hungry Spanish tax wolves. I have some sympathy for the guy but then again a lot of people do things properly and pay their taxes, so why should the non-payers get away with it?

If you want to be one of those who declare their income then here is a link to an article on our main website which explains what to do:

UK and Spanish tax implications of renting out a holiday home in Spain