IMU on agricultural land: base, rates, exemptions and payments

A teacher in Perugia inherits three hectares of olive grove that she does not farm and that a neighbour works in exchange for part of the oil. She assumes IMU is a tax on houses. The land register gives the plot a reddito dominicale of 640 €: revalued by 25 % and multiplied by 135 it yields a base of 108,000 €, and at the statutory rate the annual tax is 820.80 €. The neighbour who farms it pays nothing; the owner does.

Why a piece of land pays IMU

The municipal property tax falls on the possession of three kinds of asset: buildings, except the main home unless it is a luxury one, building land and agricultural land. Land is not a marginal case of IMU: it is one of its three triggering conditions, set out in article 1, paragraph 740, of Law 160 of 2019.

The course on IMU for buildings deals with the first category, with the cadastral rent and its multipliers. This module deals with the third. The two share a name and the same instalments, but their base, their rates and above all their exemptions have nothing in common.

Agricultural land that is not farmed is still taxed. The Department of Finance page says so when defining the base: the same rule covers agricultural land and land left uncultivated. Neglect is not an exemption, as anyone who inherits an abandoned field discovers.

Building land is a different matter. A plot that planning instruments make buildable has a base of its own: its market value on 1 January, assessed on its zone, building index, permitted use, groundwork costs and market prices. That calculation lies outside this module.

Who pays: the possessor, not the farmer

IMU is owed by whoever holds the property by ownership or by a right in rem. The statutory list covers the owner, the holder of a usufruct, use, habitation, emphyteusis or surface right, the concession holder of State-owned land and the lessee under a finance lease.

The page adds a point that is decisive for land: the tax is owed only by these persons and not by the occupier. Someone farming another person's land under a lease, or working it under an informal arrangement like the neighbour in the opening story, is not a taxable person.

That leads to a point often misunderstood. The exemptions for agricultural land also look at who farms the land, as we shall see. But if the possessor lacks the requirements, the tax stays with them even when the farmer would meet them: the requirements must come together in the one person who both holds and farms.

The taxable base: reddito dominicale, revaluation, multiplier

For agricultural land the taxable base is not a market value. It is obtained by taking the reddito dominicale shown in the land register as in force on 1 January of the tax year, revaluing it by 25 % and then applying a multiplier of 135.

The 1 January date fixes the reddito dominicale for the whole year. A change recorded in the land register in May does not alter the current year's base; it will count from the next year. So take the land register extract showing the figure in force at the start of the year, not the one on the day you calculate.

In practice the formula comes down to one multiplication. The reddito dominicale is multiplied by 1.25 and then by 135, that is by 168.75 in a single step. The imu-terreni-agricoli calculator rounds only once, to the cent, on the final product, so that no small differences pile up.

The rate: the statutory one, unless a resolution says otherwise

For each category the law sets a standard rate that the municipality may change, up or down, within set margins. For agricultural land that is not exempt the statutory rate is 0.76 %. The municipality may go down to zero or up to 1.06 %, and no further increase is provided for.

The 1.06 % ceiling is absolute for this category. In the column for the further increase that some municipalities may apply to other categories, the Department's table reads not provided for agricultural land. A higher rate on a payment notice therefore deserves a check.

At the other end, the minimum-rate column reads zero. A municipality may therefore bring the tax on agricultural land in its territory down to nothing. The outcome looks like an exemption, but its source is different: it depends on that year's resolution and can change with the next one.

From 2025 municipalities stop sending the resolution to the Ministry; they draft it through an application on the fiscal federalism portal, which produces a schedule of the categories chosen. That schedule is an integral part of the resolution, and it is where a possessor finds their municipality's rate.

The four exemptions for agricultural land

Paragraph 758 of Law 160 of 2019 exempts agricultural land in four cases. They are statutory exemptions, not options left to the municipality, and each looks at something different: the person who holds and farms, where the municipality lies, the island, the collective nature of the ownership.

• Land held and farmed by direct cultivators and professional agricultural entrepreneurs enrolled in the farmers' social security scheme, agricultural companies included
• Land in the municipalities on the list in Ministry of Finance circular no. 9 of 14 June 1993
• Land in the municipalities of the minor islands listed in annex A to Law 448 of 2001
• Land permanently devoted to farming, forestry and grazing under indivisible collective ownership that cannot be acquired by prescription

The first exemption is the most used and the most misread. It needs three things at once: the land must be both held and farmed by the same person; that person must be a direct cultivator or a professional agricultural entrepreneur; and they must be enrolled in the farmers' social security scheme. Miss one, and the exemption falls away.

The teacher in the opening story is not a direct cultivator and does not farm the land. The neighbour who works it might be one, but he is not the possessor. Neither of them meets all the conditions, so the tax remains due.

The two territorial exemptions depend on location alone. Land in a municipality on the 1993 list, or on a minor island in the 2001 annex, is exempt whoever holds it. The check is made on the lists, municipality by municipality, not on a guess about altitude or distance from the coast.

The land's exemption does not extend to the buildings standing on it. The same page recalls that rural buildings used for farming, exempt from 2014, have been subject to IMU again since 2020. A barn or a farm store follows the rules for buildings, covered in the dedicated course.

The imu-terreni-agricoli calculator asks you to declare each of the four conditions and, where one applies, returns a nil tax stating which. It does not itself check social security enrolment or the lists: those are facts the possessor has to establish.

Share and months of ownership

Each calendar year is taxed separately, and only for your part of it: the share you hold and the months your possession lasted. Two siblings who inherit the holding half each compute the tax on their own half, not on the whole holding.

Possession for over half the days of a month makes that month count whole. The transfer day itself goes to the buyer. If buyer and seller have the same number of days in the month, that month's tax falls entirely on the buyer.

Share and months combine by multiplication, always starting from the annual tax on the whole holding. Someone holding a third for six months pays a third of six twelfths, which is one sixth of the annual tax. Keep the three steps separate so you can retrace them if the figures are ever checked.

Two instalments, and which resolution counts

IMU is paid in two instalments. The first is due by 16 June and equals the tax for the first half-year, computed at the rate for the twelve months of the previous year. The second is due by 16 December and settles the whole year, adjusting the first instalment where needed.

The balance is computed on the rate resolution published on the Department of Finance website as at 28 October of the year. If nothing has been published by then, the acts adopted for the previous year apply to the balance. That is the date to check before working out the December instalment.

The example shows why the two instalments are rarely equal. The first looks back to the previous year, the second closes the current year's account. A December instalment higher than June's is not necessarily a mistake: the resolution may have changed, or the ownership.

If you prefer, the whole year's tax can be paid in a single sum by 16 June. The law allows it expressly. It is the simplest choice for a holding owned all year in a municipality whose rate does not change from one year to the next.

Payment is made only with the F24 form or with the compatible postal current-account slip. The law also provides that a ministerial decree may admit the pagoPA platform; the page presents that as a future possibility rather than a current route.

The full calculation in six steps

• Check that the plot is agricultural land and not building land
• Rule out the four exemptions: possessor who is a farming direct cultivator or professional entrepreneur, municipality on the 1993 list, minor island, collective ownership
• Take the reddito dominicale in force on 1 January, revalue it by 25 % and multiply it by 135
• Apply the rate in the resolution published by 28 October, or the statutory one if the municipality has set none
• Reduce the tax to your share and to your months of possession
• Pay the first instalment by 16 June and the balance by 16 December, or everything by 16 June

The first two steps decide whether the tax exists at all; the others decide how much it is and when it is paid. Skipping the second is the costliest mistake in both directions: you either pay what was not owed, or claim an exemption for which one condition was missing.