When a let counts as short and how it is taxed

Sofia lists the two-room flat she inherited in Florence on a booking platform and takes €14,000 in bookings during 2026. Before paying her, the platform kept back €2,940. Sofia thinks her tax is settled. It is not: that amount is only a payment on account, and in her return she still has to pick a regime, work out the real tax and pay or recover the difference.

What makes a let short

Article 4 of Decree-Law 50 of 2017 sets a tax regime specific to short lets. The first condition is length: the contract lasts no more than 30 days. The second concerns the property, which must be residential and located in Italy. The third concerns the parties, who must be individuals acting outside any business.

Length is measured contract by contract. When the same people sign several contracts in a year, the 30 days are checked on each one, not on the total of the stays. A guest who comes back three times for twenty days stays inside the regime; a single thirty-five-day contract falls out of it.

Being outside a business applies to both sides. Short lets that the tenant signs as part of its own commercial activity are excluded, for example staff accommodation for employees, and this holds even when that activity is not carried on regularly.

In land-registry terms, the units that count are categories A/1 to A/11, excluding A/10 offices and private studios, let for living in, together with their appurtenances: garages, parking spaces, cellars and lofts. A property fit to live in but registered in a different cadastral category does not qualify.

Services allowed and services that make it a business

The regime is not lost when the price covers services closely tied to the accommodation. The Italian Revenue Agency lists linen, cleaning of the premises, use of telephone lines and wi-fi. These are what anyone expects when renting a home for a few days, and they do not change the nature of the contract.

The line is crossed when the landlord adds services of a different kind. The Agency's examples are breakfast, serving food and drink, car hire, tour guides and interpreters. In those cases the activity counts as a business, even when carried on occasionally, and the short-let regime does not apply.

The test is the nature of the service, not its price. An extra change of sheets or a mid-stay clean are still part of the accommodation; a meal, a hire car or a guided visit are another activity altogether. In the Agency's reading, such extras take the whole contract out of the regime.

The regime also covers cases where the person letting is not the owner. It includes sublets, paid contracts by which a borrower under a loan for use lets third parties enjoy the property, and lets of single rooms in a home, always within 30 days. Someone renting out a room of their own flat for a weekend is therefore covered.

The channel makes no difference to the tax either. The contract may come from a direct deal between owner and guest, through an estate agency, or through a platform matching guests and hosts: the regime is the same. Only the intermediary's duties change, and they are the subject of the second module.

Every stay in the year on the same unit adds up to that unit's income. A studio booked by fifty different guests yields one annual income made of fifty short contracts. That total is what the regimes are compared on and, for those who elect, what the chosen rate is applied to.

Two flats at most

From 2026 the short-let regime is reserved to people who, in the tax year, devote no more than two flats to short lets; up to 2025 four were allowed. Above that threshold the activity is presumed to be a business, whoever carries it on. The cedolare secca course covers this limit and which flat should take the reduced rate.

The count is of flats, not contracts. Someone letting two homes for short stays, each to dozens of different guests over the year, stays within the limit. Someone adding a third home, even for a few weeks, has to reckon with the presumption of a business and everything that follows from it for tax.

Cedolare secca or ordinary taxation

Income from short lets can, at the landlord's choice, be taxed under the cedolare secca rules of Article 3 of Legislative Decree 23 of 2011. Electing means paying a tax that replaces IRPEF and its regional and municipal surcharges. If the contract is registered, the cedolare also absorbs registration tax and stamp duty.

The standard cedolare rate on short lets is 26 per cent. It falls to 21 per cent for contracts on a single unit per year, which the taxpayer names in the income tax return. The site's cedolare secca calculator applies both rates to the annual rent.

Contracts of up to 30 days do not have to be registered. So the election does not go through the RLI form: it is made in the income tax return for the year in which the rent accrued or the fees were collected. Only when the contract is registered voluntarily is the choice made at registration.

The election is made contract by contract. The exception is someone letting different parts of the same home for periods that wholly or partly overlap: then the choice made for the first contract also binds the regime of the next one. Two rooms let over the same weekend therefore follow a single regime.

Voluntary registration remains an option. In that case the cedolare is elected at registration, which then takes place without registration tax or stamp duty. Registering without the election means paying both.

Anyone who does not elect falls under ordinary taxation: the income is added to other income and bears banded IRPEF plus surcharges. Under that regime the rent enjoys a flat 5 per cent reduction, which the cedolare does not allow. The comparison has to be made on the taxpayer's marginal rate, not on the headline percentage.

The comparison gets closer on the second flat, taxed at 26 per cent. On the same €8,000 the cedolare comes to €2,080, while ordinary IRPEF at 23 per cent, on 95 per cent of the rent, comes to €1,748 plus surcharges. For someone in the first band with tax credits to use, the ordinary regime can become attractive again.

Under ordinary taxation, the rental income is also added to other income and can push the taxpayer into the next band or reduce benefits linked to total income. With the cedolare it stays separate for IRPEF but, as shown further on, it still counts for ISEE and for family dependants.

The base the tax is worked out on

Under the cedolare the rate applies to the full rent stated in the contract, without the 5 per cent reduction. For sublets and contracts by a borrower under a loan for use, the base is the gross fees. Services charged at a flat rate, such as a fixed cleaning fee, are part of the base too.

Costs of ancillary services stay out of the gross fee in two cases only: when the guest pays them directly, or when the landlord recharges them to the guest on the basis of actual costs and consumption. A bill passed on to the cent is not income; a flat charge for utilities is.

For everything else the cedolare on short lets follows the one on ordinary leases: returns, assessment, collection, refunds, penalties, interest and disputes. In practice the payment calendar is that of IRPEF, with a balance and advance payments, as the course on the cedolare shows.

Sub-landlords, borrowers and co-owners

Someone who sublets, or who lets third parties use a property received on loan, does not become the holder of the property income. The owner, or the holder of another right in rem, keeps declaring the property's cadastral income. The sub-landlord or borrower declares the fees as miscellaneous income, with the cedolare if elected.

When a property has several owners but only one signs the contract, income is attributed to each owner in proportion to their share. Any withholding made by an intermediary, however, is certified only to the signatory, and only he or she can offset it or claim it back if there is not enough tax to absorb it.

The other co-owners declare their share of income with no withholding to offset, and each chooses between the cedolare and the ordinary regime. For a couple owning a platform-listed flat half and half, putting the listing in one name concentrates all the withholding on that spouse.

Income that stays visible

Income taxed under the cedolare does not enter total income for IRPEF and surcharges, but it does not vanish. It counts in deciding whether someone is a tax dependant, for family and rent tax credits, and for every benefit tied to income, starting with ISEE, the household means test.

Either way the property's details must go on the return: in section B of the 730 form or in section RB of the Redditi Persone fisiche form. That is also where the taxpayer names the unit that gets the reduced rate and, as the second module shows, reports the withholding suffered.

Filling in those lines needs a yearly summary for each property: dates and amounts of every stay, services included in the price, metered recharges with the bills behind them, and the intermediaries' certificates. Keeping it current through the year saves rebuilding everything in the days spent preparing the return.

The summary also helps watch the limits. A contract that runs past 30 days, breakfast added for a few guests or a third home listed over the summer changes how the whole year is treated: finding out only at year end means the wrong regime has already been applied.

• Does each contract last 30 days or less?
• Is the property a home in categories A/1 to A/11, other than A/10, located in Italy?
• Are both landlord and guest individuals acting outside any business?
• Are the services limited to linen, cleaning, wi-fi and utilities?
• Are no more than two flats used for short lets in the year?
• Does the price include flat charges for services that must be added to the taxable base?

The regime described here is the 2026 one. In the later version of Article 4 of Decree-Law 50 of 2017, paragraphs 1, 2 and 3, which define it, are shown as repealed by the new consolidated income tax reform that applies from 2027. For lets in later years, check the provisions that replace them.