The Municipal Tax Office (IMH) is beginning to see the initial results of the Tax Regularisation Plan in the Tourist Sector 2025–2028, which consists of a series of inspections that aim to regularise the Economic Activities Tax (IAE) in the tourist accommodation sector. This Plan, which was drawn up in conjunction with the ATC (Catalan Tax Agency), checks whether an operator has registered for the IAE and pays all the taxes that all companies operating HUTs have to pay according to this subsection when their turnover exceeds €1M per year.

From now until 2028, the Plan aims to inspect 463 companies that own or operate a total of 2,281 HUTs and 280 tourist flats. The phase of inspection procedures has already gotten under way in 99 organisations that pay the IAE for holiday lets, which covers 1,300 HUTs, along with three more procedures in companies that pay the tourist flat activity tax and operate a total of 105 flats. Until now, the first 20 procedures completed have regularised and raised €287,031.26 with 47 payments, increasing the annual IAE amount by €79,834.61.

This ambitious Plan is the outcome of inter-institutional collaboration with an exchange of information, and the ATC allowed the IMH to inspect data on tourist flats, hotels, apartments and hostels owned by legal entities that have paid the regional tourist stay tax. The inspectors cross-referenced this information with the legal entities counted in the IAE’s subsections related to property rentals and accommodation.

The goals of the regularisation include checking the solvency, fulfilment of tax obligations and compliance with tax laws of companies that manage and rent holiday lets. The inspection also makes it possible to detect whether construction has been undertaken without paying the construction, installation and works tax (ICIO), which is applied to any construction, installation and works which requires a construction or urban planning license, and to regularise the tax according to the final construction cost.

The goals sought with the Plan under way are:

• Registrations in the IAE: registration in the IAE subsection for companies that operate tourist lets when their annual turnover exceeds €1,000,000.
• Update of elements: regularisation/update of the surface area, number of accommodations and/or category of the homes of companies already registered.
• Correction of rates: change the subsection from conventional home rental (national rate) to tourist let (municipal rate).
• Any other irregularities detected: situations in which the use and rateable value can be regularised for the purposes of the property tax (IBI), and to detect cases in which undeclared construction was done for census purposes or was not regularised for the ICIO.

The 2025–2028 Inspection Plan is being rolled out in three phases

The Tax Regularisation Plan in the Tourist Sector has three phases. It was launched in the third quarter of 2024 with the entire phase of data-crossing between tax agencies and the DSI (Inspection Services Directorate) and drafting the models that stipulate the inspection procedures.

The second and current phase will last until 2026 and will enable the procedures under way (99 companies that manage HUTs and the 3 tourist flats) to be completed and a third phase, 2026–2028, the most important one, to be launched. This last phase involves the inspection of the other entities engaged in holiday lets and tourist flats that do not appear as taxpayers for any economic activity in the AEAT (Spanish Tax Authority) in tax year 2023 or any activity related to accommodation.