Tourist tax in Italy: who pays it and who declares it
Updated 14.09.2026
The town collects the tourist tax, but it is not the guest who answers to the town: you do. Since 2020 the host is responsible for the payment, with the right to recover it from the guest. Translated: if a guest leaves without handing over the two euros a night, you pay those two euros anyway.
Who really answers to the town
The guest is the taxpayer: the tax falls on them. But the town does not go looking for the guest, who by now is back home. It comes looking for you.
The rule is art. 180 of D.L. 34/2020, which inserted paragraph 1-ter into art. 4 of D.Lgs. 23/2011: the operator is responsible for payment of the tax, with the right of recovery against guests. That right is a right, not a guarantee: if you cannot collect, the duty to pay still sits with you.
In January 2026 the Court of Cassation, sitting in joint chambers, closed a long-running argument with order no. 1527: the operator is a person liable for the tax, not an accounting agent. Professional commentary draws two practical consequences: disputes go to the tax court, and the so-called modello 21 for the Court of Auditors should no longer be due.
Short lets are a case apart: art. 4 paragraph 5-ter of D.L. 50/2017 places the duty on whoever collects the rent or intervenes in the payment. If a portal or an agency collects, it is theirs; if you collect, it is yours. It is worth knowing this for certain, channel by channel.
Every town has its own rule
There is no single law with the rates inside it. The state gives towns the power to introduce the tax; each town then decides by resolution how much is paid, who is exempt, how often it is remitted and through which portal. Here in the Valle d'Itria you see it better than anywhere.
| Town | How much | When and where |
|---|---|---|
| Carovigno | 1 € per person per night | by the 10th of the following month |
| Ostuni | 2 € per person per night | quarterly, on a different portal (PayTourist) |
| Ceglie Messapica | not applied | — |
In Carovigno nobody under fourteen pays. Three towns twenty minutes apart, three rules: anyone with two houses in two towns has two calendars of deadlines and two portals.
Almost every town regulation sets a cap on taxable nights, often seven or ten consecutive in the same property: from the next one the tax is no longer due. On a two-week stay that is the difference between a correct bill and one that is too high.
The annual return, by 30 June
On top of paying the town during the year, once a year you file the tourist tax return: it covers the previous year, it is filed electronically only through the channels of the Agenzia delle Entrate, on the form approved by D.M. of 29 April 2022, and it falls due on 30 June.
This is where half of all hosts come unstuck: the return is a duty in its own right. Having paid on time every month does not release you from filing it. They are two separate obligations — paying the tax and accounting for it — and you can be perfectly up to date on payments and still be fined for the missing return.
Towns cannot invent their own forms for this return. What they can and do require are the periodic reports of guest nights during the year: that is something else again, and in some towns they must be sent even as nil returns, for the months the house stayed closed.
What getting it wrong costs
Penalties run on two separate tracks and can add up.
For an omitted or inaccurate return: one hundred to two hundred per cent of the tax due — and the current rule catches even those who had already paid it in full. For omitted or late payment the general regime for local taxes applies instead (art. 13 of D.Lgs. 471/1997): an ordinary penalty of twenty-five per cent, halved if you pay within ninety days and reduced further for very short delays.
If 30 June has passed there is still a window: voluntary correction within ninety days of the deadline. Beyond that the return counts as omitted and the reduction is no longer available.
From 1 January 2027 this changes. Art. 12 of D.Lgs. no. 147 of 7 August 2026 replaces the 100–200% range with two fixed percentages of the unpaid tax: one hundred per cent for an omitted return, forty per cent for an inaccurate one, with a minimum of fifty euros in both cases. Anyone who has paid in full will no longer have a percentage calculated on money already handed over. The new rule is not retroactive: it applies only to breaches committed from that date onwards.
How it is calculated, night by night
The formula is simple — chargeable people × nights × rate — and it is the details that do the damage.
- The cap on nights in the town regulation, if there is one: beyond it you stop counting.
- Anyone exempt stays out of the count, and age is read from the date of birth, not by eye.
- A stay that crosses two months is split on the right day, without counting the boundary night twice.
- Cancelled bookings and no-shows generate no tax: nobody stayed the night.
- The count must start from real guest nights, the ones already reported to the Questura, not from a figure written by hand.
Anyone keeping the count in a notebook finds out in June of the following year, when twelve months have to be lined up again and nobody remembers whether that group in August had a child of thirteen or of fifteen.
Exemptions are not the same everywhere
The most common exemption is for minors, but the age threshold is set by the town regulation: twelve in one place, fourteen in another, eighteen elsewhere. Depending on the town you may add people with disabilities and their companion, police on duty, parents attending a hospitalised child, drivers and guides of groups.
Two practical warnings. Many regulations require the exemption to be documented, usually with a self-declaration from the guest to be kept on file. And an exempt guest must still be reported as a presence: not paying does not mean invisible.
Collecting from the guest without an argument
Almost every dispute starts with a surprise: the guest paid a price on a portal and on arrival you ask for another forty euros in cash.
The remedy is not insisting better, it is saying it earlier: in the listing, in the booking confirmation and in the message before arrival, with the amount already worked out and in the guest's language. Buried at the bottom of the terms is not enough. A receipt for what they handed over puts them in the clear too.
How Chilloso solves it
When a house comes in from a town we do not know yet, we go and find the rule ourselves: how much is paid, who is exempt, how often it is remitted, through which portal. Then we write it into your property, and from that moment the calculation runs by itself. We know of no other management system that does this.
It counts nights and people from the registration forms you have already sent to the Questura. Anyone under fourteen is recognised from the date of birth and taken out of the count. A stay crossing two months is split on the right day, without being counted twice.
The statement comes out in the language of the town, because that is where it goes, and the month's amount flows into your cash book by itself: at the end of the year the total is already there, when you need it for the return.
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