Who pays IMU, and on what value

Anna inherits a category A/2 flat in Perugia from her aunt, with a cadastral income of 1 000 €. She neither lives there nor lets it. When her adviser sets up the IMU computation, the figure the rate applies to is not 1 000 € but 168 000 €. Between those two numbers sit a 5 % uplift and a multiplier of 160, and the municipality chooses neither of them.

What triggers the tax

IMU, the municipal property tax, starts from a simple fact: holding a property. Whether the property earns anything is irrelevant. An empty flat and a let one are treated alike, because the taxable event is ownership of the asset, not the return it produces.

• Buildings, excluding the main residence unless it is a dwelling in cadastral category A/1, A/8 or A/9
• Building land
• Agricultural land

The first item already holds the rule that matters most to households. The home one lives in normally pays nothing. The exceptions are main residences registered as A/1, A/8 or A/9, the so-called luxury homes, which remain taxable at their own rate and with their own deduction, covered in the second module.

This course concentrates on buildings, meaning units entered in the land register with a cadastral income: second homes, offices, shops, industrial sheds, garages. Building land and agricultural land follow different base rules, which come up further on only to tell them apart.

The taxable event draws no line between individuals and companies. A firm that owns its own warehouse pays IMU just as a private owner pays it on a holiday home. What changes is the cadastral category, hence the multiplier, and the rate, which for group D includes a share reserved to the State.

Who has to pay

• The owner of the property
• The holder of a real right of usufruct, use, habitation, emphyteusis or surface
• The parent to whom a court has assigned the family home
• The concession holder, for concessions over State-owned land
• The lessee, for property held under a finance lease, including property to be built or under construction

The list is closed: IMU is owed only by these persons. Someone who occupies the property without holding it, a tenant for instance, does not pay. The occupant used to be liable for TASI, which the 2020 budget law abolished; today the tax on holding property falls entirely on the holder.

The list places real rights next to ownership. Where a flat is subject to usufruct, the holder of the usufruct, the person actually enjoying the property, appears among those liable for the tax. It is a point worth settling at once in inheritances and in gifts with a reserved usufruct.

Two figures are less intuitive. A parent to whom a court assigns the family home is liable even if the property belongs to the other parent. And under a property finance lease it is the lessee who pays, not the leasing company that remains the owner, even for a building still being completed.

From cadastral income to taxable value

The tax is the rate set for the particular case applied to the taxable base. The base, in turn, is the value of the property as determined by law. For buildings entered in the land register that value is not estimated: it is derived from the cadastral income through two fixed operations.

The formula fits on one line: cadastral income, raised by 5 %, times the coefficient of the category. In practice the income is multiplied by 1.05 and then by the multiplier. The result is the taxable base, the value to which the municipality's rate will be applied.

The cadastral category is read from the extract, never inferred from how the property is used. A flat turned into a professional office in practice stays in group A if the register was never updated, and a garage registered together with the dwelling keeps its own category. The registered category picks the multiplier.

The comparison shows why different properties cannot be ranked by cadastral income alone. The C/1 multiplier is barely a third of the one for dwellings, and group D's does not reach half. Before comparing two IMU bills, both incomes always have to be brought to their taxable base.

Building land and agricultural land

For building land the base does not come from a cadastral income, since there is none, but from the market value on 1 January of the tax year, or from the date the planning instruments were adopted. That value is rebuilt from a set of factors laid down by law.

• The zone in which the land lies
• The building density index
• The permitted use
• The cost of any groundwork needed before construction
• Average market prices recorded on sales of land with similar features

Municipalities may periodically set, by homogeneous zones, the market values of building land. A taxpayer who pays on a value no lower than the predetermined one limits the municipality's power to reassess: a real safeguard, worth checking in the municipal regulation before declaring a lower value.

Building land owned and farmed by a direct cultivator or a professional agricultural entrepreneur enrolled in the farmers' scheme, who keeps farming, forestry or livestock activity going there, counts as agricultural land. For that owner the relief means exemption; a co-owner without those qualifications pays as on agricultural land.

For agricultural land, farmed or not, the base starts from the land-register ownership income on 1 January, raised by 25 per cent and multiplied by 135. Much agricultural land is exempt, however, for instance land owned and farmed by direct cultivators and professional agricultural entrepreneurs enrolled in the farmers' scheme.

When the taxable base is halved

The law provides three 50 % reductions of the taxable base for buildings. They apply to the base, not to the tax: the base is computed as usual, halved, and only then is the rate applied. Each has precise conditions that must be checked one by one.

• Buildings of historic or artistic interest under Article 10 of Legislative Decree 42/2004
• Buildings declared unfit for use or habitation and not in fact used, only for the part of the year in which those conditions exist
• Dwellings other than A/1, A/8 and A/9 lent free of charge to first-degree relatives in the direct line who use them as their main residence

The free loan to a child or parent is the most common reduction, and the most demanding. The loan must be registered. The lender may own in Italy only the loaned dwelling, plus at most his own main residence if it is not a luxury home. And he must reside and habitually live in the property's municipality.

The reduction survives a painful event: if the borrower dies, it continues to apply where the property remains the main residence of the surviving spouse with minor children. For an unfit building, by contrast, the reduction is temporary and covers only the part of the year in which the unfitness actually exists.

If a single condition is missing, the reduction is lost entirely. Were the same father to own a seaside flat as well, or live in another municipality, or leave the loan unregistered, the base would be full again. The relief does not shrink in proportion: it applies or it does not.

Months of ownership and shares

The tax is owed by calendar year, in proportion to the share held and to the months of the year during which the property was held. Two co-owners with 50 % each pay half the tax apiece; a buyer who acquires mid-year pays only for the months after the purchase, and the seller for those before.

A month counts in full if the property was held for more than half of its days. The day of transfer is attributed to the buyer, and where buyer and seller held the property for the same number of days, that month's tax falls entirely on the buyer.

Share and months combine by multiplication. A 50 % co-owner who holds the property for six months answers for a quarter of the annual tax computed on the whole building. The order to follow never changes: base of the whole property, then the share, then the fraction of the year, and the rate last.

What to gather before computing

• The cadastral extract, with category and cadastral income of each unit, appurtenances included
• The share held and the right exercised: ownership, usufruct, habitation
• The date from which the property has been held, or on which holding ended
• How the property is used: main residence, free loan, lease, empty
• Any grounds for reduction: historic or artistic interest, declared unfitness, registered free loan
• The rate resolution of the municipality where the property lies

With these six items the computation becomes mechanical, and the IMU calculator on this site runs its core, from cadastral income to tax. Without them one ends up guessing, and a wrong guess on the category or the share repeats itself unchanged at every instalment, for years, until a municipal assessment corrects it.