Running a house in Puglia from afar: deadlines, shifting rules, people
Updated 14.09.2026
From a distance the problem is not letting the house. It is everything that happens on the days you are not there: the deadlines that run anyway, the rules that change without telling you, and the hardest question of all — who looks after the house for you.
- Deadlines do not wait for you to land
- What changed while you were away
- Identifying the guest: the point that weighs most from a distance
- Guests' identity documents
- The tourist tax and the penalties that change from 2027
- Who looks after the house
- The expenses of those who work for you
- How Chilloso solves it
- Frequently asked questions
Deadlines do not wait for you to land
The guest arrives on Tuesday: their details must reach the police within twenty-four hours of arrival, six hours if the stay does not exceed twenty-four. On the tenth of each month, the transmission of tourist movement data to the region, without exception, for the previous month. The tourist tax has its own day, set by the municipality.
None of these deadlines looks at where you are. They are the same for someone living two hundred metres from the house and for someone living in Amsterdam, and none of them forgives a delay because the flight was full.
The calendar of obligations is the only part of this trade that cannot be put off. Everything else — a leak, a light bulb, a review — can wait a day. This cannot.
What changed while you were away
The real risk from a distance is not the deadlines: those you write down. It is that the rules change and nobody tells you. People living in Italy hear it from their accountant or their neighbour; people living elsewhere find out when the notice arrives. In under three years, this happened:
| When | What | Where it is written |
|---|---|---|
| from 2024 | the CIN is required, to be displayed and stated in every listing | art. 13-ter D.L. 145/2023 |
| 21.11.2025 | the Council of State confirms identification de visu | Cons. Stato sec. III no. 9101/2025 |
| 29.04.2026 | the data protection authority: after transmission, the copy of the document must be erased | note web doc. 10244289 |
| 12.08.2026 | the decree rewriting penalties on local taxes comes into force | D.Lgs. 147/2026, Official Gazette 11.08.2026 |
| from 01.01.2027 | penalties on the tourist tax return change | art. 12(7), (8) and (9) D.Lgs. 147/2026 |
Five lines, three years. None of these changes was announced to hosts: they appeared in the Official Gazette, in a judgment, in a letter to the trade associations.
Identifying the guest: the point that weighs most from a distance
The Council of State, in judgment no. 9101 of 21 November 2025, confirmed that guests must be identified de visu: the operator must check that the person entering matches the photograph on the document. And it clarified that the duty also applies to those letting or subletting under contracts of less than thirty days, hotel sector or not.
Be careful how this gets told. The judgment did not introduce a new duty in November 2025: it held that the ministry's circular merely restated a duty already contained in article 109 of the Consolidated Law on Public Security, and was therefore an interpretative act. The duty existed before. That day it was only confirmed.
What the judgment censures is the extreme practice: taking the document over chat and sending the key box code, with nobody seeing who enters. The court writes that the circular neither touches nor categorically excludes more advanced forms of checking. That is not a written green light for video: it is a door left open. Before setting your procedure, ask a professional.
Guests' identity documents
On 29 April 2026 the Italian data protection authority wrote to the trade associations that the legal duty concerns the transmission of data, not its retention: the five years run on the Ministry of the Interior's systems. Once the receipt is generated, the copy of the document must be erased or destroyed.
From a distance this becomes concrete quickly. If the document passes through a chat, that copy stays on the phone of whoever sent it, on yours and on the messaging service's servers — and no one can delete it from there any more. The authority expressly instructs you to collect the data without photos taken on mobile devices and without instant messaging services.
The tourist tax and the penalties that change from 2027
Here is good news that almost nobody tells as such. Until now, for merely omitting or misfiling the annual tourist tax return, the penalty ran from 100 to 200 per cent — even for someone who had collected and paid over everything correctly.
Legislative decree no. 147 of 7 August 2026 rewrites the rule in article 12: for failure to file the return the administrative penalty is 100 per cent of the tax not paid over, and in any case not less than 50 euro; for an inaccurate return it is 40 per cent of the tax not paid over, and in any case not less than 50 euro. The change affects both article 4 of D.Lgs. 23/2011 and article 4(5-ter) of D.L. 50/2017, the one covering short lets.
Two dates not to confuse. The decree has been in force since 12 August 2026, but article 12(9) says these provisions apply to breaches committed from 1 January 2027. For everything before that, the old regime of 100 to 200 per cent still applies.
Who looks after the house
This is the part no software solves. The gardener, the cleaners, the plumber on a Saturday evening, the water tanker in August when the well runs short. Finding them from a thousand kilometres away means asking someone who knows someone, and hoping.
And once found, the earlier problem remains: who gets the keys to what. Whoever cleans needs to know when the house frees up, not who sleeps there or what they paid. Whoever repairs needs the job and the address, not your calendar.
The expenses of those who work for you
Close up you check by looking. From afar you check by reading, and what you read is a list of numbers somebody else wrote. Eighteen tanker runs at forty euro make seven hundred and twenty euro, and without a document under each one they are just a line on a sheet.
This is not about distrust. It is that an expense without proof can be neither verified nor challenged — nor taken to your accountant.
How Chilloso solves it
The obligations do not depend on where you are: the data goes to the police, the file for the region is prepared, the tax calculates itself. And we follow the rules: when something changes, it changes inside Chilloso, and you notice only because it keeps working.
Above all you are not alone. Chilloso is not a program to use in solitude: it is a network of people who work around the houses. Whoever brings the water, cleans, repairs, manages, keeps the accounts. You search the network, find who operates in your area, and connect them to your house.
From then on they see their piece of work and nothing else: the cleaning calendar, the job to do, the right villa. Not your bookings, not your accounts, not your guests. And when someone spends, the expense arrives with the proof beneath it: the photo of the document, the date, the house. At month end the statement is not a list of numbers to be taken on trust.
Nobody enters this network without having said yes, and whoever said yes can change their mind at any time. The data serves to make the network work: it is not sold and not passed to anyone.
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