IMU explained: Italy's annual property tax

What you pay and who pays

The tax is due from the owner, from the holder of a right such as usufruct, use, habitation, long lease (enfiteusi) or surface right, from the parent who is assigned the family home by a court, and from a lessee under a finance lease. It is not due from a tenant or other occupier. A foreign owner who lives abroad pays on the Italian property like any other owner.

The tax runs by calendar year and in proportion to your share and to the months you owned the property. A month in which you owned it for more than half its days counts as a whole month, and the day of transfer counts for the buyer, who pays the whole of that month if both sides owned for the same number of days. When you buy or sell mid-year, the deed date matters, so the purchase process should settle who pays what with the seller’s side.

How the base is calculated

For a building registered in the cadastre, the taxable value is the cadastral income (rendita catastale) increased by 5%, multiplied by a fixed coefficient:

The formula is: rendita × 1.05 × multiplier, then × the municipal rate. A calculation, not a quote: using the €900 rendita that the tax agency itself uses in an unrelated worked example, a category A home has a taxable value of 900 × 1.05 × 160 = €151,200, and at the legal 0.86% rate the annual IMU would be €1,300.32 (more or less according to the municipality’s rate). Your own figure needs the rendita from the property’s cadastral extract; see the cadastral income guide and the cadastral search.

The rates the law sets

The Finance Department’s table gives each case, the rate set by the law and the margin municipalities have:

Builders’ unsold new buildings (“fabbricati merce”) have been exempt since 2022 while they remain for sale and are not let. For rented-out property see also cedolare secca, which concerns income tax on rent and does not replace IMU.

The main-home exemption

The exemption applies to the unit where the taxpayer and the household are registered at the registry office and actually live. The garage, cellar or similar pertinence in categories C/2, C/6 and C/7 shares the exemption, up to one unit per category. A home you own but where you do not have your registered residence and do not live, such as a holiday home or a home owned by someone who lives abroad, is therefore taxed as “other building”. Cooperatives, social housing, a family home assigned in a separation, and certain police, army and fire-service homes are treated as main homes by law, and municipalities can extend the treatment to the home of elderly or disabled people permanently in care if the home is not let.

How and when to pay

• First instalment: by 16 June, equal to the tax for the first half-year at the previous year’s rate and deduction.
• Second instalment: by 16 December, settling the whole year on the municipality’s decision published on the Finance Department’s website by 28 October; if nothing was published by then, the previous year’s decisions apply.
• You may also pay the whole year in one go by 16 June.
• Payment is by F24 form or a compatible postal slip; the law foresees the national payment platform too once a decree allows it.

Since 2025, municipalities prepare their rate decisions through an electronic form on the federal-tax portal, with the summary attached to the decision.

The declaration

An IMU return is needed only when a change occurs that the municipality cannot easily know. It is due by 30 June of the year after the one in which you started owning or the relevant change took place, and it is valid for later years unless the data change. If you inherit and the succession declaration lists real estate, you do not file a separate IMU return: the tax agency passes the declaration to the municipality (see inheritance and succession tax).

Bolzano and Trento

In the Province of Bolzano the equivalent tax is called IMI and in the Province of Trento IMIS; the Finance Department’s search page publishes their regulations and rate decisions alongside IMU. Rates and rules there come from the provincial regime, so use that page and the town hall.

Which professional to consult

An accountant calculates IMU and files the F24 or the return; a surveyor can correct a cadastral registration that gives a wrong rendita; the notary explains how the tax is split between buyer and seller in the year of sale.