Deductible charges in 2026, their caps and the choices that follow

Laura is an engineer with total income of €52,000. Every year she pays something into her pension fund and gives to charity. In 2026 she wonders whether to add €3,000 to her fund contributions or put the same money towards other credit-bearing expenses. The answer lies in one line of Article 10, an annual cap and her marginal band.

What Article 10 lists

Article 10 opens with a condition: charges are deducted from total income only if they are not already deductible when computing the individual types of income that make it up. An expense that already lowers business or self-employment income is not deducted a second time from the total.

A list of lettered items follows. It is not a list of loose expense types but of precise situations, each with its own conditions. It pays to read them closely, because most taxpayers use two or three of them every year without realising they are deductions rather than credits.

• Letter b): medical and specific care expenses for people with serious and permanent disability
• Letter c): periodic maintenance paid to a separated or divorced spouse, excluding sums for the children
• Letter e): compulsory social security contributions, and voluntary payments into one's own compulsory scheme
• Letter e-bis): supplementary pension contributions, within the limits of Legislative Decree 252/2005
• Letter e-ter): contributions to supplementary national health service funds
• Letter g): donations to eligible non-governmental organisations
• Letter l-bis): half of the adoptive parents' costs for the adoption procedure
• Letter l-quater): cash gifts to universities, public research bodies and park authorities

The letter b) medical expenses show how the law shares out expenses between the two routes. General medical costs and specific care costs of people with serious disabilities are deducted in full. Other medical expenses are credited under Article 15, which describes them as «other than those listed in Article 10».

Letter e) is the one self-employed people use most. Compulsory contributions paid to their own professional fund or scheme, and voluntary ones paid into the same scheme, reduce total income. For a professional taxed under the ordinary regime in the second or third band, this deduction is worth a third or more of the contributions paid.

Paragraph 2 extends the deduction of compulsory contributions to those paid for domestic workers and personal or family carers, within a limit. In the consolidated text served by the Gazzetta that limit is still expressed in lire: this course does not convert it and refers you to the return instructions.

For supplementary health funds, the €3,615.20 cap also counts health contributions paid through the employer, which Article 51 excludes from employment income. Someone who already receives them through payroll has had the benefit: they do not deduct them again, and the cap applies to the combined amount.

Spousal maintenance, donations and adoption

Letter c) deserves attention because it covers recurring and often large sums. Periodic payments to a spouse following legal separation, dissolution or annulment of the marriage, or the end of its civil effects, are deductible to the extent set by a court order.

Payments earmarked for the children's upkeep are left out: where the order identifies them, that share does not reduce the payer's income. The rule also speaks of periodic payments, and its text says nothing about one-off lump sums: check how they are treated before counting them as a deduction.

Donations to eligible non-governmental organisations are deductible up to 2 percent of declared total income. Someone declaring €40,000 can therefore deduct at most €800 under this heading; a larger gift is welcome, but the excess earns no further deduction under this letter.

For adoption, letter l-bis) lets adoptive parents deduct 50 percent of the costs of the procedure governed by Chapter I of Title III of Law no. 184 of 4 May 1983. Letter l-quater) adds cash gifts to universities, public research bodies and park authorities, with no cap in the text served.

Employees and deductions through payroll

Employees do not always have to wait for their return to feel a deduction. TUIR Article 51 excludes from employment income the sums the employer withholds for Article 10 charges, on the conditions that article sets, and requires the employer to certify the amounts.

The typical case is pension contributions withheld from pay: the withholding agent removes them from taxable pay month by month, and the IRPEF effect arrives with the salary. It is still up to the worker to check that all payments, those withheld and those made directly to the fund, stay within the annual cap.

Supplementary pensions: the €5,300 cap

Supplementary pension contributions are the deduction best suited to a deliberate choice, because the taxpayer decides how much to pay in. Article 8(4) of Legislative Decree 252/2005 makes contributions paid by the worker and by the employer, whether voluntary or required by contract, deductible from total income.

For years the annual cap stood at €5,164.57. The consolidated text now adds a sentence: from the 2026 tax year the limit is raised to €5,300. The cap applies to the worker's and the employer's contributions combined, not just to personal payments.

Contributions above the cap, or not deducted for any other reason, should not be forgotten. Paragraph 4 requires the taxpayer to tell the fund how much was not deducted by 31 December of the year after the payment, or earlier if the right to a benefit arises first.

That notice has a clear purpose. A deducted contribution cut tax when it was paid; a non-deducted one did not. The fund needs to know so it can treat the money correctly when it pays it back. Paying in above the cap without telling the fund risks losing an advantage the law intended to give.

The cap is annual, and as a rule room left unused in one year does not roll over. Paragraph 6 makes an exception for people whose first job began after the decree came into force: for their first five years of membership, contributions they could have deducted but did not pay can be caught up later.

The catch-up happens during the twenty years after the fifth year of membership, by deducting contributions above the ordinary cap, and never for more than half the annual limit. The rule is aimed at people starting out on low pay: worth knowing before writing off a lean year as a lost opportunity.

If Laura put the same €3,000 into expenses credited at 19 percent, she would save €570, provided her tax could absorb it. On tax alone the comparison is clear-cut. Still, money in the fund is locked away until the benefit is paid, while a credit-bearing expense meets a present need.

The cap above €75,000 targets credits

Since 2025, taxpayers with total income above €75,000 face a cap on the sum of their credit-bearing expenses. The Agency's pre-filled return page describes it as a maximum amount of creditable spending that varies with income and with the number of dependent children.

The page speaks of credit-bearing charges and expenses, and the pre-filled return's automatic calculation applies to them. Article 10 deductions are not mentioned. For anyone above €75,000 the distinction becomes even more concrete: an extra credit-bearing expense may yield nothing, while a deductible charge keeps shrinking the base.

Alongside that cap sits an older rule, also recalled on the pre-filled return pages: for some expenses the credit is available in full up to €120,000 of total income, then tapers until it disappears at €240,000. Again, the rule hits the credit, not deductible charges.

A point of method. The €75,000 and €120,000 thresholds are measured on total income. Deducting a charge does not move total income, given the Article 11 distinction seen in the first module: paying more into a pension fund will not take you under one of these thresholds.

Choose in euros, not out of habit

Real choices come in three kinds. How much to pay into a deductible scheme whose amount you control, such as a pension fund. Which household member pays for and documents a credit-bearing expense. In which year to incur an expense, when one year's tax is too low to absorb the credit.

The first choice follows Laura's example: marginal rate times amount, within the cap, set against the alternative use of the money. The higher the band, the better the deduction pays. A first-band taxpayer gets 23 cents per euro; a top-band taxpayer gets 43.

For the second choice, each person's tax capacity matters. A credit claimed by the family member with little tax may be wasted, while the same expense borne by the other member would be absorbed. The Agency's rule still applies: the expense must really be borne by whoever claims it, and documented accordingly.

For the third choice, the year of payment counts. Expenses go on the return for the year they were paid. Bringing forward or postponing a credit-bearing expense makes sense when tax capacity swings sharply between years, for instance in a year of unpaid leave or the first year of retirement.

A final recommendation concerns paperwork. For credits, the Agency asks you to keep invoices, receipts and itemised till slips until the assessment deadline, 31 December of the fifth year after the return. The same common sense applies to deductions: without the document, a deduction will not survive an audit.

Put together, the decision path is short. Identify the marginal band, check whether the expense is deductible or credit-bearing and under what cap, turn the amount into euros of tax and check tax capacity. Then weigh the result against everything else: cash flow, lock-in periods and what the household actually needs.