A new blog post by Anna Nicholas on MyTelegraph infers that officials are clamping down on owners of holiday homes in Spain who fail to declare their rental earnings to the Spanish tax office (La Hacienda).
MyTelegraph is a Telegraph Newspaper blog where expats share tips and tales of living abroad with other expats. The post from Nicholas argues that an estimated three billion euros is raised annually from non-disclosed holiday rentals, and that 55 per cent of property rentals are undeclared. The most concern seems to be around the areas of Madrid and Catalonia although the
Balearic and
Canary Islands are also under scrutiny, according to the blog.
It is something that hoteliers and hotel pressure groups in the Balearics and Spain have been campaigning against for some time and the post is based mostly on information from 2007.
The post argues that it has been fairly easy to avoid paying taxes on rental properties because La Hacienda has had no proper monitoring systems in place. However, the advent of more holiday homes being advertised on the internet has made the task of identification so much easier for the tax officers.
In
Majorca the holiday rental community has apparently been thrown into panic by the latest crackdown. Often expats are willing to pay tax but meet with confusion when they do attempt to declare income – due to no clear guidelines and the regional government not having a system in place to assist foreigners with rental declaration and when.
But one of the comments on the post points out that the reason why many private owners do not register for tax is due to the difficulty they have in obtaining tourist licenses on their holiday homes and that any assumption that they're simply tax dodgers would be wholly unfair.
The same commentator suggests the authorities should introduce a proper accommodation grading and licensing system to protect tourists and give legitimate private owners a reason to come clean on tax. Data from
holidaylettings.co.uk reveals that Spain is still the most popular holiday destination for those opting for private holiday rentals. Perhaps this is little surprise given the scale of holiday apartment construction that Spain has encouraged and sold to foreign investors in recent years. It would be a shame for the authorities to fail to notice also the value these homes and their transient guests bring to the local Spanish economies.
Source:-
www.holidaylettings.co.ukhttp://www.buyin-fuerteventura.comLabels: buyin fuerteven tura, canaries, canary island rentals, property, spain, spanish letting
