Administrative obligations for short-term rentals: everything you have to do, in calendar order
Updated 15.09.2026
Anyone who rents out a home thinks they have one obligation: paying tax. In fact there are more than ten, and they do not all fall due at once. Some are done once, before the first guest. Others at every arrival, others every month, others once a year. This page puts them in order for anyone renting out a home in Puglia, and for each one points to the page that explains it in full.
Once, before the first guest
The first step is not a portal but the municipality. In Puglia, anyone renting for tourist purposes files with the SUAP, the one-stop shop for business activities: the CIA, a notice of start of activity, if renting on a non-business basis; the SCIA if renting as a business. Anyone already operating before the regional reform must comply by 30 September 2026.
Then the region. You register on the DMS and receive the regional identification code. Today that code is a stepping stone: regional law 15/2025 abolished the obligation to show it in listings, and it is the way to the CIN, the national identification code. The CIN, by contrast, must be displayed and shown in every listing. How the DMS works and everything about the CIN.
With the CIN come the safety requirements: working gas and carbon monoxide detectors and compliant fire extinguishers in every unit. Then there is registration on Alloggiati Web, the Polizia di Stato portal, without which you cannot report guests to the Questura.
The last obligation is new: from 30 September 2026 every host, business or not, must hold third-party liability insurance towards guests, sized to the accommodation capacity.
At every arrival
Within twenty-four hours of arrival, every guest’s details must reach the Questura through Alloggiati Web. If the stay does not exceed twenty-four hours, the deadline drops to six. Whoever signs the registration form provides eleven details; family members and members of a group, seven. The guide to Alloggiati Web.
Collecting the details is not enough: the guest must be identified on arrival, in person or by video link. At the end of the transmission the system issues a receipt, which is the proof of compliance and must be kept for five years. The image of the document is not: once reported, it is deleted. Online check-in and keeping the receipts.
The third arrival task is the most variable. Where the municipality has introduced a tourist tax, it is collected from the guest under that municipality’s rules: rates and exemptions change from town to town. How it is calculated.
Every month
In Puglia guest movements are recorded daily on SPOT, the regional tourism observatory system: arrivals, departures, no movement, closed. They are transmitted by the 10th of each month for the previous month. This also applies to holiday lets.
Paying the tourist tax over to the municipality follows the schedule set by your municipality’s regulations.
Every year
By 30 June the tourist tax return for the previous year is filed, online only. Then the income tax return: in the 730/2026 form, section B has a dedicated box for the CIN of the rented property.
| When | What | To whom |
|---|---|---|
| Once | CIA or SCIA | Municipal SUAP |
| Once | Registration and regional code | Region, DMS |
| Once | CIN application | Ministry of Tourism |
| Once | Detectors, extinguishers, insurance | Keep in order, checked by the municipality |
| Once | Registration on Alloggiati Web | Questura |
| At every arrival | Registration forms within 24 hours, 6 if the stay does not exceed them | Questura |
| At every arrival | Tourist tax from the guest | Municipality |
| Every month, by the 10th | Guest movements of the previous month | Pugliapromozione, SPOT |
| Every year, by 30 June | Tourist tax return | Agenzia delle Entrate |
| Every year | Income tax return with the CIN | Agenzia delle Entrate |
None of these obligations sends you a reminder. No letter arrives saying «due tomorrow»: the fine arrives. Without a CIN, 800 to 8,000 euros. Without a CIA, 500 to 2,500 euros per unit; without a SCIA, 2,000 to 10,000; and in both cases immediate closure. Guest movements not transmitted: 200 to 600 euros.
Tax in 2026: 21, 26 and the 21 withheld
If you rent as a private individual, you can opt for the cedolare secca on short-term rentals, a flat substitute tax. The rate is 21 % for a single unit, the one you designate in your return; the others are taxed at 26 %. It is paid on the gross amount, portal commissions included: the full calculation.
Here is the detail that confuses many. The portal that collects payment for you withholds 21 % and pays it over as withholding agent, but that withholding is an advance, not the final amount. If you owe 26 % on that home, you pay the difference yourself in your return. Portals, managers and withholding.
From the third flat, everything changes
From tax year 2026, the short-term rental tax regime applies only to those who use no more than two flats for this purpose. Above that threshold the activity, whoever carries it out, is presumed to be a business. Until 2025 the limit was four: the 2026 budget law halved it.
Presumed business status means leaving the cedolare secca for business taxation, with a VAT number. And in Puglia, for business rentals, the SUAP filing is the SCIA, not the CIA.
For the two-flat threshold, what counts is the number of residential units used for short-term rentals, not the number of contracts or rooms: several rooms let in the same home count as a single flat.
How Chilloso solves it
Whatever can be done for you, we do. Guest details go to the Questura, the receipt comes back and stays in your property’s archive for five years. The SPOT file is prepared. The tourist tax is calculated under your municipality’s rules, and if we do not know your municipality yet, we go and ask how it works there ourselves.
Whatever remains yours, you know in advance: the deadlines of your municipality and the portals live in Chilloso, not in your memory.
And when the rules change, and in 2026 they have changed several times, Chilloso changes. You only notice because it keeps working.
Do you need more information?