The Taxes on Buying a Home in Italy, 2026: Line by Line

Those three questions decide which of the cases below applies. This article sets out, line by line, the rate, the base, who pays and when, for the cases in the guidance of the Agenzia delle Entrate (AdE), the Italian tax agency, and in the statutes behind it, as read on 30 September 2026. Rates and conditions change, and they depend on the property, the seller and the buyer. The other costs of a purchase are in “The True Cost of Buying a Home in Tuscany”, and the main Italian terms are explained in the box at the end of the article.

Which rate applies to your purchase?

The answer begins with the seller. A sale by a business is exempt from VAT as a rule. VAT applies to sales by construction or restoration companies within five years of the completion of the building or the work, or later if the seller opts for VAT in the deed or the preliminary contract. It also applies to social housing where the seller opts for VAT.

From there, two further questions settle the matter: whether the buyer meets the conditions for the prima casa, the reduced rate on a first Italian home, and whether the purchase is a dwelling, agricultural land or, at an earlier stage, a preliminary contract. Each combination leads to one of the five cases below.

What is due on a home bought without VAT?

This is the case of a home bought from a private person, or from a business that sells without VAT, by a buyer who does not claim the prima casa benefits. One tax dominates the bill, and it is registration tax. The mortgage tax and the cadastral tax are fixed sums, small beside it.

Dwelling, no prima casa, sale without VAT

The notary does the paying, but the cost is the buyer’s. The minimum of €1,000 applies to the proportional tax. The amount actually payable at the deed may be lower, because the proportional tax already paid on a deposit when the preliminary contract was registered is credited against it. Where proportional registration tax applies, the deed and the formalities that follow in the cadastre and the property registers are exempt from stamp duty, special cadastral charges and mortgage duties.^[1]

One change of procedure is worth knowing about. Since 1 January 2025 registration tax is calculated by the person liable to pay it and checked afterwards by the office, and for deeds filed electronically on the unified form the taxes are paid on self-assessment.^[2]

What changes when the sale carries VAT?

When the sale is subject to VAT, VAT is charged on the price, and registration, mortgage and cadastral tax are fixed amounts of €200 each. The arithmetic changes shape: one percentage on the price, then three flat sums.

Dwelling, no prima casa, sale subject to VAT

One point calls for care, because it reaches the buyer as well as the seller. If the price stated in the deed and the invoice differs from the real price, the buyer, even a private person, is jointly liable with the seller for the VAT on the difference and for the penalty.^[3] A private buyer can regularise the position by paying the additional tax within 60 days of the deed and sending the AdE a copy of the receipt and of the corrected invoices.^[3]

What does the prima casa change?

The prima casa is the reduced-rate treatment for the purchase of a first Italian home. It lowers registration tax to 2%, or VAT to 4%, but only for a buyer who meets the conditions. It is neither a general “main home” rule nor open to every buyer. Here the numbers turn on the buyer’s circumstances as well as on the home. The conditions are specific, and the cost of getting them wrong is high, as the last of the questions below shows.

Dwelling with the prima casa benefits

In both cases the fixed taxes are the same as before, €50 each or €200 each, and only the percentage falls. The AdE states the conditions as follows.

Which homes qualify?

The home must be in category A/2, A/3, A/4, A/5, A/6, A/7 or A/11. Categories A/1 (upper-class dwellings), A/8 (villas) and A/9 (castles and palaces of eminent artistic or historic value) are excluded. The benefits also extend to one pertinence in each of categories C/2, C/6 and C/7 that serves the home on a lasting basis.

Where must the buyer live or work?

The home must be in the comune where the buyer resides. A buyer resident elsewhere must move residence to that comune within 18 months of the purchase, and must declare the intention in the deed, or the benefits are forfeited. The benefits also apply where the home is in the comune where the buyer works, even unpaid. For someone who moved abroad for work after living or working in Italy for at least five years, not necessarily continuously, they apply in the comune of birth or of previous residence or activity.^[4]

What if the buyer already owns property?

A buyer who already owns a home bought with the benefits keeps them for the new purchase if the old home is sold within two years, for deeds from 1 January 2025.^[5] The benefits are not available for a home in the same comune as another property bought without them.

What if the declaration is wrong, or the conditions lapse?

The buyer must state in the deed that the requirements are met, and a false declaration leads to forfeiture. Forfeiture brings the tax saved, interest and a penalty of 30% of that tax.^[6] It can follow a false declaration, a sale or gift within five years (unless another home is bought within a year for use as a main home), failure to move residence within 18 months, or failure to sell the earlier home within two years.^[6]

In the other direction, someone who sells a home bought with the benefits and buys another with them within a year is entitled to a tax credit equal to the registration tax or VAT paid on the first purchase, up to the tax due on the second.^[6]

Can the tax be calculated on the cadastral value instead of the price?

For some buyers the law offers a different base. Under the prezzo-valore rule the taxes are calculated on the cadastral value of the home and not on the price. It applies when the sale is subject to proportional registration tax (so not a sale with VAT), the buyer is a private individual not acting in a business, artistic or professional capacity, and the building is residential (with pertinences that have their own cadastral income). The buyer must ask the notary for it in the deed itself and not in a later integrating deed, and the parties must state the real price in the deed.^[7] The cadastral value comes from a short formula, and the multiplier depends on whether the prima casa applies.

The rule does not allow the price to be hidden. If the price is concealed, even in part, the taxes are calculated on the real price and a penalty of 50% to 100% of the difference between the tax due and the tax applied is added.^[7] Under the rule the AdE cannot assess the market value for registration tax, except where the price is concealed, and the notary’s fees are reduced by 30%.^[7] The parties must in any event make the payment declaration described in “The Bank Account and the Source of Funds”. If it is omitted, incomplete or false, a fine of €500 to €10,000 applies, and the sale becomes subject to a value assessment for registration tax even where the cadastral value was requested.^[7]

The AdE’s own worked examples show the effect. A home with a rendita catastale of €900 is bought for €200,000, and in both cases the tax on the cadastral value is lower than the tax on the price.

The AdE gives the registration tax only, not a total with the fixed taxes.

How is agricultural land taxed?

Land follows its own logic: here the buyer’s status sets the rate. The 15% rate and the buyer’s status matter to a farmhouse sold with land, and “Buying a Vineyard Estate” sets out the farm context.

Agricultural land

The first row is the buyer who is not a coltivatore diretto or IAP; the other two rows are the registered farmers. The references for each row are in the notes at the end of the article.

What is due before the deed?

The taxes start before the deed: the preliminary contract is itself registered, and it is taxed. The contract must be registered within 30 days of signing, and the proportional tax depends on whether it carries a deposit or payments on account.

Preliminary contract

The fixed €200 is due on every registered preliminary contract. What varies is the tax on any deposit or payment on account, and the stamp duty, which follows the length of the contract. As an example, a contract of 8 pages and 210 lines is three sheets, or €48 (the editorial team’s calculation from the AdE rule).

Where a contract has both deposits and payments on account, the amount due is the fixed €200, plus 3% of the penitential deposit, plus 0.5% of the payments on account and of the confirmatory deposit (or the lower tax applicable to the final contract).

The rates changed recently. Since 1 January 2025 a single rate of 0.5%, or the lower tax applicable to the final contract, applies to sums given under a preliminary contract, whether a confirmatory deposit or a payment on account; before that date the rates differed.^[13] The tax paid is credited against the principal tax due on the final contract. The 3% on the penitential deposit is the AdE’s position, as stated in its guidance of 22 December 2025.^[14]

The proportional tax paid on the preliminary contract is credited at the deed. The contract must be in the same form as the final contract, or it is void.^[15] The stages of a purchase are described in “How a Foreigner Buys Property in Italy”.

What does the owner pay each year?

After the deed the tax bill becomes annual. The owner pays IMU, the municipal property tax. The law sets a standard rate for each case, and the comune may raise or lower it within limits.^[16]

The table also shows a ceiling of 1.14% for comuni that use an option the law provides, and a rate of 0.5% (maximum 0.6%, with a €200 deduction) for a main home in category A/1, A/8 or A/9; other main homes are exempt.^[16][17] The pattern is plain: a main home in the ordinary categories is exempt, while a second home is not. The rate actually applied in a given comune is set by its own resolution. The table gives the rates; the sum due also depends on the property and on the comune. TARI, the municipal waste tax, is a separate charge that this article does not cover.

The notary and the cadastral charges

No national tariff fixes the notary’s fee: tariffs were abolished in 2012, and the professional must give a written or digital estimate.^[18] Under the prezzo-valore rule the notary’s fees are reduced by 30%.^[7] And the deed of sale, and the formalities that follow in the cadastre and the registers, are exempt from stamp duty, special cadastral charges and mortgage duties.^[1] The other cost heads of a purchase are in “The True Cost of Buying a Home in Tuscany”.

The consolidated text from 1 January 2027

The consolidated text on registration tax and other indirect taxes entered into force on 13 August 2025.^[19] A later decree-law moved the date from which its provisions apply from 1 January 2026 to 1 January 2027, and the decree was converted into law in 2026.^[19] The rules described above are those applied in 2026.

The AdE pages read for this article do not refer to the new text. The consolidated texts published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale were read on 2 October 2026: the rates, the fixed amounts, the VAT rates, the coefficients and the prima casa conditions described above are the same in them.^[20] The article numbers change.^[21] The article will be re-checked from 1 January 2027.

Why the order of the questions matters

The seller’s status, the buyer’s status and the type of property each lead to a different case above. In practice the seller settles the first question, whether VAT enters the picture; the buyer’s status and the type of property settle the rest.