The cedolare secca is the flat-rate substitute tax a private owner can elect on short-let income — contracts of up to thirty days — instead of IRPEF income tax and the regional and municipal surcharges. From the 2026 tax year the standard rate is 26%, reduced to 21% for a single property per year, which the owner names in the tax return. The regime applies only if no more than two units are used for short lets in the year: beyond that, the law presumes a business, with a VAT number and an entirely different regime (until 31 December 2025 the limit was four units). These are the rules published by the Agenzia delle Entrate as we update this guide, September 2026: check them with your accountant before filing, because budget laws touch this point often.
«From 2026, the tax regime for short lets under Decree-Law 50/2017, art. 4, paragraphs 2 and 3, may be applied only where no more than two apartments per tax period are used for short lets (until 31 December 2025 the limit was four apartments). In all other cases, short-let activity, by whomever carried out, is presumed to be conducted as a business.»
Agenzia delle Entrate, «Le locazioni brevi e la cedolare secca» — our translation
The election is made in the annual tax return, year by year and per property, and can be changed. In practice it nearly always pays for anyone whose marginal IRPEF rate is above 23%, which is most villa owners. The honest comparison covers everything, though: under the ordinary regime 95% of the rent is taxed, under the flat rate 100% — but with no brackets, no surcharges, and without that income pushing your rate up on everything else.
Whoever collects on your behalf — a portal, an intermediary, a management company — withholds 21% of the rent at source and certifies it by March of the following year. If you elected the flat rate, that withholding is tax already paid; if your second property is taxed at 26%, the difference is settled in the return. If you did not elect, the withholding is an advance on IRPEF. Either way, the certificate is the document to keep.
What the flat rate does not cover: the tourist tax, which you collect for the municipality and which is not income; IMU property tax, still due; the administrative obligations — CIN, guest registration, ISTAT — which have a guide of their own. And it does not apply if you provide hotel-type services in a structured way, such as breakfast or daily cleaning: at that point you are no longer a private owner letting a house, you are a hospitality business.
«If the Government’s aim is to favour long lets over short ones, the right road is not to punish the latter but to encourage the former.»
Giorgio Spaziani Testa, presidente di Confedilizia — Giornale di Brescia, ottobre 2025 — our translation
How we handle it for the owners we manage: a monthly statement with gross rent, withholdings, commissions and costs in separate columns, so the accountant fills in the return without reconstructing anything; the withholding certificate ready in February; and, before starting, a simulation with the house’s real numbers — how many weeks, at what rate, what is left net under the flat rate and under IRPEF. If you own a villa in Tuscany and want that simulation, write to us: the address and the number of bedrooms are enough.
