Real estate taxes in Italy 2026: when buying, owning, and selling

What real estate taxes in Italy consist of

To avoid confusion, it's convenient to split all payments into three groups by the moment they arise. This immediately removes half the questions and helps calculate the real transaction budget in advance.

• When buying.One-off fees at the time of arrangement: registration tax (imposta di registro) for resale or IVA (VAT) for new builds, plus mortgage and cadastral fees and the notary's fee.
• When owning.Annual payments: the municipal IMU tax (if housing isn't exempt) and the TARI waste collection fee. If the apartment is rented out - rental income tax.
• When selling.Capital gains tax (plusvalenza) - but only if you sell the property sooner than 5 years and it's not your main residence.

Next we break down each group separately, with rates and important nuances that are easy to miss. An important caveat right away: buying square meters on its own doesn't give a residence permit in Italy - there's no golden visa for real estate here, and about this separately below.

Registration tax when buying resale housing

If you buy an apartment or house on the resale market from a private seller, the main one-off payment is the registration tax, imposta di registro. Its rate depends on whether the property becomes your main residence or remains a second one.

Fora main residence(prima casa) the rate -2%. To get this benefit, you need to transfer official residency to the municipality where the property is located within 18 months after the deal, and not own other housing in Italy with the same benefit.

Fora second home(and for buyers not relocating for residency) the rate -9%. This is the most common situation for a foreign investor buying a house for seasonal vacations or renting out.

The key point: the tax is calculated not from the contract price, but fromthe cadastral value(valore catastale) - the property's official valuation in the register, which is usually noticeably lower than the market one. This often works in the buyer's favor, because the tax base turns out lower than the actual deal amount. Fixed mortgage and cadastral fees are added to the registration tax - usually 50 euros each when buying from a private individual.

IVA when buying a new build from a developer

If you buy the property directly from a developer (usually this is new or fully reconstructed housing), IVA - the Italian VAT - applies instead of registration tax. The alternative principle applies here: either the registration fee or IVA, but not both at once.

IVA rates on new builds in 2026:

• 4%- if the property is registered as your main residence (prima casa) and meets the benefit's conditions;
• 10%- for a second home of a regular (non-luxury) category;
• 22%- for premium-category housing (luxury, cadastral classes A/1, A/8, A/9 - villas, historic mansions, castles).

An important difference from resale: IVA is charged onthe deal's price, not the cadastral value. That is, when buying from a developer, the tax base is the real amount you pay. In a deal with IVA, the registration, mortgage, and cadastral fees turn into small fixed amounts (roughly 200 euros each), so the main burden is exactly VAT.

The notary and accompanying transaction costs

Besides taxes, the notary's (notaio) fee is mandatorily part of the purchase budget. In Italy the notary isn't a formality, but a key figure of the deal: they check the property's cleanliness, absence of debts and encumbrances, prepare and certify the sale deed (rogito), and remit the taxes to the treasury themselves. Without a notary, the transfer of ownership simply won't happen.

The notary's rates are partly regulated and depend on the property's value - roughly from 1% to 2.5% of the deal's price, with the percentage lower the pricier the property. There's a minimum threshold on inexpensive houses.

Besides the notary's fee, other expenses are worth budgeting in advance: real estate agency services (usually 2-4% plus IVA), technical inspections of the property, document translation, and if needed, a trusted representative's services if you're not present at the deal in person. For a foreign buyer it makes sense to budget from the start for a lawyer who works in a language you understand and checks every step.

Summary table: operation - tax - rate

To keep the whole picture in view, we've collected the key real estate operations and their corresponding taxes into one table. Rates are given roughly for 2026; exact amounts depend on the property, municipality, and your resident status.

IMU - the annual property tax in Italy

IMU (Imposta Municipale Unica) is the main annual property tax in Italy, which the owner pays for the mere fact of owning the property. The money goes directly to the budget of the municipality (comune) where the real estate is located.

The most pleasant rule:a main residence is usually exempt from IMU. If the house or apartment is your sole residence of a non-luxury category, the annual ownership tax usually isn't charged at all. The exception - elite properties (cadastral classes A/1, A/8, A/9): they always pay IMU.

Buta second home, rented apartments, and elite real estate are subject to IMUat a rate of roughly 0.46% to 1.06% a year of the cadastral value, adjusted by coefficients. The specific percentage is set by the municipality. From 2026 an updated nationwide rate grid takes effect (based on the Ministry of Economy's decree of November 6, 2025), from which municipalities choose values - the ranges have become stricter and more uniform, but the tax's structure itself is the same. IMU is usually paid in two parts - an advance in June and the balance in December.

TARI and other annual owner payments

The second regular payment is TARI (Tassa sui Rifiuti), the fee for collecting and disposing of household waste. Unlike IMU, this isn't an ownership tax, but a service fee, so TARI applies to practically all properties, including a main residence.

The amount of TARI is calculated differently than IMU: it depends on the property's area and the number of registered occupants, and each municipality sets its own rates, so amounts differ noticeably from city to city. For a typical apartment, it's usually a few hundred euros a year.

Non-tax lines should also be added to the owner's annual expenses: utility payments, property insurance, and if the apartment is in a condominium - contributions for the building's shared maintenance (spese condominiali), which can be significant in prestigious complexes with a concierge and pool. None of this is taxes, but it's exactly these lines that make up the real cost of maintaining Italian real estate, and they need to be budgeted in advance.

Rental income tax: the cedolare secca regime

If you rent out Italian real estate, the income is taxed. The owner has a choice between two approaches, and for most private landlords the special flat regime is more advantageous.

Cedolare secca- this is a flat replacement tax on housing rental income. Its base rate is21%of the rent, and it replaces both income tax and a number of registration fees under the contract. For certain regulated contracts with reduced rent (canone concordato) the rate drops to10%. The regime's main advantage is simplicity and predictability: a fixed percentage instead of including income in the progressive scale.

The alternative - include the rental income in overall annual income and pay on the progressive IRPEF scale (up to about 43%) accounting for deductions. For short-term rental (tourist letting), from 2026 its own rules apply: the first property - 21%, from the second the rate rises to 26%, and from the third rented property the activity is already considered entrepreneurial. Which regime is more advantageous in your case is a question of specific figures, better calculated with a tax consultant.

Tax when selling real estate in Italy

When you decide to sell the property, the capital gains tax - plusvalenza - can come into play. But it doesn't always apply, and the main rule here is the ownership term.

If you sell the property within 5 years of purchaseand it wasn't your main residence, the profit from resale (the difference between the sale price and purchase price minus expenses) is taxed at a rate of26%. When arranging the deal at the notary, you can choose to pay this 26% as a replacement tax right at the moment of signing the deed - this needs to be requested in advance. The alternative - include the gain in overall income and pay on the progressive scale.

When there's no capital gains taxthere won't be:

• if the property was yoursa main residencefor most of the ownership period - the sale is exempt;
• if you owned the propertylonger than 5 years- the gain isn't taxed, even if it was a second home.

Documentarily confirmed expenses can be deducted from the taxable base: the initial price with taxes paid at purchase, notary and agent commissions, bank fees for the deal. So properly kept purchase documents directly reduce the future tax when exiting the asset.

Resident or non-resident: what changes in taxes

The tax burden on the same apartment can differ depending on whether you're an Italian tax resident. It's important here not to confuse two different concepts.

Residency upon purchase(transferring the official place of residence to the property's municipality) is a condition for the prima casa benefit: a reduced registration tax of 2% or IVA of 4% and exemption from IMU on the main residence. Without transferring residency, these benefits aren't available, and the regular rates of 9% / 10% apply.

Tax residency- a broader status that affects where you pay taxes on all your income, not just Italian real estate. For wealthy people relocating to Italy there's a separate preferential regime for new tax residents (flat tax on foreign income) - this is already a topic of relocation tax planning, not the real estate itself. If you're specifically interested in the tax side of life in the country, we cover it separately in our article ontaxes in Italy.

Why buying real estate doesn't give a residence permit

This is perhaps the main misconception CIS buyers come with. In Italythere's no golden visa for real estate: however much you invest in square meters, the purchase itself doesn't give a residence permit. This is a fundamental difference between Italy and a number of other European countries.

A foreigner can buy real estate - for citizens of countries with which Italy has the reciprocity principle (Russia has it), this is quite legal and real. But the right to live in the country isn't given by the property, but by separate grounds: the investor visa, the visa for the financially independent (residenza elettiva), the digital nomad visa, and other routes.

For those who want to tie the investment specifically to a legal move, there'sItaly's investor visawith clear entry thresholds. And real estate in this pairing plays the role of comfortable housing and an investment asset, but not the legal grounds for a residence permit. So buying square meters and getting status need to be planned as two separate, though connected, tasks.

1-euro houses and other nuances for foreigners

A separate story that regularly pops up in the news - Italian 1-euro houses in small towns (borghi). This is a real program, but the romance quickly runs into the terms. The symbolic one-euro price comes packaged with an obligation to renovate the house within a set term (usually several years) and pay a deposit that's returned only after the works are completed. Real restoration investments run into tens of thousands of euros, plus all standard purchase taxes and fees are calculated from the cadastral value, not from this symbolic euro.

For buyers from Russia and other CIS countries, general rules also matter: the deal proceeds strictly within EU legislation, with enhanced compliance on the origin of funds and no sanctions-circumvention schemes whatsoever. A Schengen visa will be needed to take part in the deal, an Italian tax code (codice fiscale), and usually an Italian bank account for payments. Russia, meanwhile, allows a second citizenship and doesn't prohibit owning foreign real estate - but that's a matter of personal status, not the topic of this article. We cover the purchase specifics in more detail in our article onreal estate in Italy for Russians.

How to put together the full transaction budget in advance

So the purchase doesn't spring surprises, it makes sense already at the property-selection stage to put together the full budget of all expenses - not just the price, but all taxes and fees. This will protect you from a situation where there's enough money for the house itself, but not for arranging it.

An approximate checklist of expenses beyond the property price:

• registration tax (2% or 9%) or IVA (4% / 10% / 22%);
• fixed mortgage and cadastral fees;
• the notary's fee (roughly 1-2.5%);
• the real estate agency's commission (2-4% plus IVA);
• legal support and document translations;
• future annual payments: IMU (if the property isn't exempt) and TARI.

On resale housing, the total one-off burden beyond the property price for a second home often comes to around 10-15% of the value, on a new build much depends on the IVA rate. Real figures for a specific region and segment are better checked against current market data - we track price trends in our review ofreal estate prices in Italy. And it's more convenient to put together the full picture on the property, taxes, and the connection to relocation together with a specialist handling your specific situation.

Briefly about taxes and the next step

Let's sum up. Real estate taxes in Italy break down into three clear stages.When buying- registration tax of 2% or 9% of the cadastral value for resale, or IVA of 4% / 10% / 22% of the price for new builds, plus the notary.While owning- annual IMU (a main residence is usually exempt, a second one and elite property pay) and TARI for waste collection; rental income - under the cedolare secca regime from 21%.When selling- a 26% capital gains tax if you exit the property sooner than 5 years and it's not a main residence; in other cases, usually an exemption.

And the main thing to keep in mind: buying square meters doesn't give a residence permit - the move and its taxes are planned separately. If you're considering Italy as a country for living and investing, it makes sense to build the pairing of property, legal status, and tax regime from the start. BRIDGES GLOBAL specialists will help sort this out for your situation on the pageItaly's investment programs- or write to us directly viathe contact form, to get a calculation for a specific property and relocation goal.

A BRIDGES GLOBAL expert's comment

Below is a practitioner's view on how to calculate taxes on Italian real estate without the typical mistakes CIS buyers come with.