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Taxation and safety: how short-term rentals are regulated in Italy

What is meant by short-term rental?

According to art. 4 of the Legislative Decree 50/2017, short-term rental are "rental contracts for properties for residential use with a duration of no more than 30 days, including those which provide for the provision of linen supply and room cleaning services, stipulated by natural persons, outside the exercise of business activities, directly or through entities carrying out real estate brokerage activities, including through the management of online portals."

To be defined as entrepreneurial, an activity must be economic, carried out professionally and organized for the purpose of producing or exchanging goods and services, or if 4 or more properties are intended for tourist rental or if the owner provides the guest with additional services, for example breakfast, it constitutes the exercise of a business activity.

The short-term rental contract can be stipulated directly by the owner of the property, by individuals who carry out real estate brokerage activities or by entities that manage online portals such as the well-known Airbnb. The 30-day deadline is to be evaluated in relation to each individual contract, i.e. the parties can stipulate multiple short-term rental contracts in one year.

Taxation and obligations on the short-term rental contract

The tax regime governed by article 4, paragraphs 2 and 3, of the Legislative Decree applies to income deriving from short-term rental contracts. n. 50/2017 and the provisions relating to the flat tax supplemented by the provisions contained in the Budget Maneuver 2024.

Landlords can join the flat rate tax regime, which replaces IRPEF and related additional taxes. If the lessor does not explicitly choose this regime, the income from short-term rentals will be subject to ordinary taxation with proportional rates.

From 2024, the dry tax rate of 21% is maintained only for the first property, which the landlord must appropriately identify in his tax return, while from the second to the fourth property the rate increases to 26%.

The subjects who carry out real estate brokerage activities, if they directly collect the fees and considerations linked to short-term rental contracts or if they intervene in the payment, have the burden of operating as withholding agents by withholding a withholding tax as an advance payment of 21% at the time of payment to the beneficiary and making the relevant payment to the Revenue Agency.

The law does not establish the obligation to register the contract with the Revenue Agency and does not provide regarding the form of the short-term rental contract, however, it leans towards the solution of the written form, linking the short-term rental contract to the general category of rental contracts, for which the legislation precisely providesthe written form.

Furthermore, despite the lack of registration obligation, the Legislative Decree 113/2018 provides for the communication of guest data to the territorially competent police headquarters by the landlord or intermediaries.

Anyone who carries out short-term rental activities as a business activity is subject to the obligation to certified notification of start of activity (SCIA) at the one-stop shop for productive activities (SUAP) of the municipality in whose territory the activity is carried out. In the event that this activity is carried out through a company, the SCIA is presented by the legal representative.

CIN and safety requirements

The Rilanci Decree introduces the obligation of the national identification code (CIN) for short-term rentals, as well as for tourist-accommodation, hotel and non-hotel facilities, standardizing any codes already issued at local level, with the entry into operation of the national database and the Telematic Portal of the Ministry of Tourism.

Some regions, such as Lombardy and Puglia, and municipalities had already moved by assigning an identifying code and will now have to proceed with the recoding of the codes previously assigned, adding an alphanumeric prefix provided by the Ministry of Tourism.

Regarding the release of the CIN, the Ministry assigns the code upon electronic submission of an application by the landlord, accompanied by a substitute declaration certifying the cadastral data of the real estate unit or structure and, for landlords, the existence of the safety requirements of the systems.

The real estate units must be equipped with functioning devices for the detection of combustible gases and carbon monoxide as well as portable fire extinguishers in accordance with the law to be located in accessible and visible positions, in particular near the entrances and in the vicinity of the areas of greatest danger and, in any case, to be installed at the rate of one for every 200 square meters of floor, or fraction thereof, with a minimum of one fire extinguisher per floor.

Subjects who grant short-term rental properties for residential use are required to display the CIN outside the building in which they are located, ensuring compliance with any urban planning and landscape constraints, as well as indicating it in each advertisement.