Question on tax.

Rent on property in UK is classed as a UK asset and HMRC want their pound of flesh. You have to declare rental income in the country where the property is rented. You still declare it in Spain as well but any tax paid in the home country is taken into account in Spain.

Tax if you leave the UK to live abroad - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

You may need to pay UK tax if you’re non-resident and have UK income. For example, you could be taxed if you have income from renting a property in the UK.

The UK has ‘double taxation agreements’ with many countries to make sure you do not pay tax twice.

Which then in most circumstances (mine included) leads to this scenario:

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Sending a Self Assessment tax return

You cannot use HMRC’s online services to tell them about your income if you’re non-resident. Instead, you must do one of the following:

• fill in a Self Assessment tax return and an SA109 form and send by post
• use commercial Self Assessment software that supports SA109 reporting (this may appear as a ‘residence, remittance basis etc’ section)
• get a tax professional to report your UK income for you

Your reply sounds logical. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my query.

I am resident in Spain. But understand I may have to pay tax on rent coming from the UK.

There's probably some follow up questions to your query.

Presumably when you were resident in the UK, you declared the property income and either did self-assessment so as to provide HMRC with their "pound of flesh" or were advised by HMRC that this wasn't required (normally this would be because the amounts are so small so as to be meaningless although I'm sure there will be an actual figure quoted somewhere on the gov.uk website/guidance).

If you're renting out what was your previous home, such that this is new rental income in the UK which you didn't have before then you'd likely have to start doing SA (hard copy; not online - see previous post) however having reasonable record keeping makes this is a relatively simple process. I have a number of UK properties rented out but it takes me less than 15 minutes a month to keep my paperwork up to date in a way that makes the SA straightforward to complete by simply plugging numbers in from my records.

The important thing to highlight is that this isn't a double tax grab - you will get credit for any tax paid directly in the UK in respect of your Spanish return - if Spain levies a higher rate of tax on the income then you would only pay the difference between the amount Spain levies and the amount you have already paid in the UK. 

Make sure to claim all the relevant/allowable deductions in respect of your return in the UK.

Many thanks for your reply. I am beginning to understand the situation and now know what to expect.