A few months left for owners of tourist apartments, before the Spanish tax authorities have access to your data.

It is finally from January 2019 and not from next October that the tourist rental platforms will have the obligation to provide the tax data of its users to Hacienda, as planed  in the tax law, approved by the Ministry of Finance in December 2017, and which will enter into force next July.

Finally, platforms such as Airbnb, HomeAway etc will have until 31 January 2019 to communicate the operations carried out in 2018 in Spain, knowing that for the year 2018, the first presentation of this declaration of information on the turnover generated by tourist apartments will be exceptionally annual.

For the rest of the financial years, the informative declaration will be quarterly and must be presented in relation to the transactions carried out during each calendar quarter, in the period between the first and the last day of the month following the end of the quarter to which the declaration relates.

Hacienda has just presented the new form, the 179 of the “Quarterly declaration of information on the rental of accommodation for tourist purposes” which will allow (or rather oblige) intermediate platforms to provide information and data relating to tourist rental activity. Of course, the names of the owners and the cadastral references will be required but also and of course, the number of nights spent with the corresponding turnover which seems logical…

On a voluntary basis, tourist platforms will also be able to provide more precise information such as the date of the stay, the exact amount of the payment, the type of means of payment used and the Tax and Customs Administration specifies that the fact of providing this additional information will only make it possible to avoid any ‘requests’ for additional information on its part.

For the Spanish state, it is an important step to try to control the monney that represents in terms of potential taxes this sector still a little sometimes “underground” and thus reduce the tax fraud that as in other countries is a sport quite well controlled here (!). It is also a question of putting an end to certain forms of unfair competition in this sector, since even hotel chains rent their rooms via private platforms, posing as private users.

The tourism sector is a pillar and engine of the Spanish economy since it represents nearly 12% of its GDP with last year more than 81 million visitors, a figure which should be largely exceeded in 2018.

After France, Spain is the second largest tourist destination in the world, generating an estimated turnover of around 100 billion euros.