Accrued costs for rental

[beowulf]

How do you declare the accrued costs when renting your apartment. In form 210 the income is specified to be accrued "on the due date or the date of payment if earlier" so that i spretty cleared. But when are costs considered accrued? In the the same help document is stated that the the expenses must be "directly linked to income obtained in Spain". And that you can only declare expenses in relation to the days the apartment is rented. This opens up for some interpretations. It is not possible to use the "cash" method i.e. costs are accrued when you pay the bill? How do you guys reason?

[sunspot]

When we considered rental a few years ago, we looked into this and were told for the pool for eg, we can only claim for the days we actually had rentals. Ridiculous as we would have to keep the pool clean in between or guests couldn't use it. As we live in UK decided against renting as costs and taxes too much so just use as a holiday home.

[beowulf]

Yes that is a problem, for example if I don't use the apartment for myself, just have it for rental, you could argue that all costs are directly linked to the rental income, independent of how many days it is rented... But on the other hand the rules about this are clear and I accept that.

My problem is more linked with how to declare the cost on the right quarter. For example, I get the electricity bill every second month. One way to declare the cost would be to say that the cost is accrued on the invoice date or the payment date of the bill. That would be close to the "cash" method. But that could also mean that the cost really incurred (the electricity was consumed) in the quarter before and should be declared for that quarter instead. To really link the costs to the income I should probably declare the accrued costs of the income quarter and then write off (subtract) that cost in the next quarter (when the bill arrives).

I just wonder how close you must be to "professional" accounting for the tax authorities to get happy? I mean as long as the tax return is close to the "true" version and the book-keeping is systematic and stored I think it should be fine?