Cedolare Secca for Non-Resident Short-Term Rental Owners in Italy: Filing, IMU, and the F24 Problem (2026)
Every guide to Italian short-term rental taxation leads with the same two numbers: 21% and 26%. Those rates are real, but they are also the easy part. The harder part — the part that generates actual confused forum posts from non-resident owners — is what happens after you know the rate: which form you file, whether you owe a second, entirely separate tax on top of it, and how you physically pay the Italian tax authority when you do not have an Italian bank account. This guide covers that second half, specifically for owners who are not Italian tax residents.
It also resolves a question that was genuinely open for most of 2026: whether the government would scrap the 21% rate entirely and move everyone to a flat 26%. That debate is over, and the answer matters for anyone budgeting a rental property's returns.
The 26% Question, Resolved
A draft version of the 2026 Budget Law proposed eliminating the 21% cedolare secca rate for short-term rentals and moving all such income to a flat 26%, regardless of how many properties an owner rented. That proposal did not survive the parliamentary process. The 2026 Budget Law (Legge n. 199/2025, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale on 30 December 2025) kept the differentiated structure that has applied since 2024: the owner designates one property to receive the 21% rate, and any additional property is taxed at 26%.
What did change is the ceiling on how many properties qualify for this private-owner regime at all. Before 2026, an individual could rent up to four properties short-term and still use cedolare secca. The 2026 Budget Law cut that cap from four properties to two. Rent a third property short-term in the same tax year, and Italian tax law applies a legal presumption that you are running a business — you need a Partita IVA, cedolare secca is no longer available, and the income is taxed as ordinary business income with VAT and INPS obligations layered on top. This is a meaningfully lower threshold than many owners are planning around, and it applies regardless of tax residency.
Two Separate Taxes, Not One
The single most common point of confusion for foreign owners is treating cedolare secca as the whole tax bill. It is not. Owning short-term rental property in Italy generates two independent, separately calculated, separately paid obligations.
Cedolare secca is a substitute tax on the income the property generates — what a guest actually pays you. It replaces ordinary IRPEF and its regional/municipal surcharges specifically on that rental income, at the flat 21%/26% rates described above.
IMU (Imposta Municipale Unica) is an annual property tax owed simply for owning real estate that is not your primary Italian residence — a second home, in the eyes of Italian tax law, whether or not you ever rent it out. Non-residency, AIRE registration, or even living permanently abroad does not exempt you from IMU on an Italian second home; the narrow reductions that exist for foreign pensioners with an Italian retirement treaty apply only to a single, non-rented property, which by definition excludes an active short-term rental.
Because these are calculated and paid completely independently, an owner who only budgets for the 21%/26% cedolare secca rate is missing a real, recurring cost.
IMU: What It Actually Costs and When It's Due
IMU is calculated on the property's cadastral value (rendita catastale, revalued by 5% and multiplied by a coefficient of 160 for residential buildings), multiplied by a rate the municipality sets within a national band. The statutory base rate is 0.86%, with municipalities generally permitted to raise it up to 1.06%, and in some specific cases slightly higher.
Payment falls in two installments: an acconto by 16 June, calculated on the prior year's rate, and a saldo by 16 December, reconciled against the current year's confirmed municipal rate. Paying the full amount in one installment by 16 June is also allowed.
A detail that surprises many foreign owners: IMU rates for second homes are set municipality by municipality, and major tourist cities commonly sit at or near the statutory maximum. Venice, Florence, and Milan, like most major Italian tourist destinations, currently apply the statutory maximum second-home rate of 1.06% (10.6 per mille) — the band where a short-term rental property typically falls, since local "limited personal use" reductions generally exclude actively rented properties. Some municipalities differentiate rates further by specific use within their own deliberation, so the exact applicable rate must always be confirmed against the property's own comune for the current tax year, published on the municipality's website or through the Ministry of Economy and Finance portal, rather than assumed from a generic second-home figure.
How a Non-Resident Actually Files
Residents with simple rental income can often use the streamlined 730 form. Non-residents cannot — the 730 is built around an Italian withholding agent (an employer or pension fund) that non-residents typically do not have. Non-residents file the Modello Redditi PF.
On the form's cover page, non-residents complete the "residente all'estero" section, declaring the foreign country of residence and foreign address for the tax year in question. The rental income itself goes in Quadro RB (Sezione I), which is used for income from real estate located in Italy regardless of where the owner lives — property abroad would go in a different section entirely, but an Italian short-term rental always belongs in RB. Each property gets its own row, with cadastral data, the period of ownership during the year, and the gross rental income received. The box marking the cedolare secca election is checked in the relevant column.
The actual substitute-tax calculation happens in row RB11, split by rate: one column for income taxed at 21%, one for the 26% band, and a total. If the owner is liable for advance payments the following year, those appear separately in the acconto rows (RN61 for ordinary IRPEF-linked positions, LC2 specifically for the cedolare secca acconto).
The F24 Problem — and How to Actually Solve It
Payment, whether of the cedolare secca balance or its advance installments, is made through Modello F24, using tax codes 1842 (balance), 1840 (first advance installment), and 1841 (second advance installment or single-installment advance). This is where non-residents run into the practical wall that generates the most frustration: the ordinary F24 process assumes the taxpayer has Italian online banking, and a meaningful share of non-resident owners simply do not have an Italian bank account.
Two workable paths exist. If the owner does have an Italian account — including one opened remotely as a documented non-resident, which several Italian banks now support — the F24 can be filed and paid through that bank's standard online banking F24 module like any resident would. Without an Italian account, payment can be made by international bank transfer to the IBAN published by the Agenzia delle Entrate for tax payments from abroad (pagamento delle imposte estero mediante bonifico), with the payment description (causale) carrying three mandatory pieces of information: the owner's Italian codice fiscale, the specific tax code being paid (1840, 1841, or 1842), and the reference year. Getting any of these three wrong on the transfer description is the single most common reason a non-resident's payment fails to reconcile against their tax position, so this is worth double-checking against the current Agenzia delle Entrate payment instructions before sending the transfer, not after.
A third option, and the one most non-resident owners with more than one property end up using in practice, is authorizing a commercialista to file the Modello Redditi PF and handle the F24 payment on the owner's behalf under power of attorney — the same relationship, and the same vetting questions, covered in our guide to finding an English-speaking commercialista in Italy.
A Worked Example
Consider a non-resident owner with two Italian apartments rented short-term through booking platforms in 2026. Property A generates €15,000 in gross rental income for the year and is the one designated for the 21% rate; Property B generates €10,000 and, as the second property, is taxed at 26%.
- Cedolare secca on Property A: €15,000 × 21% = €3,150
- Cedolare secca on Property B: €10,000 × 26% = €2,600
- Total cedolare secca: €5,750
Separately, assume both properties sit in a municipality applying the statutory maximum IMU rate of 1.06% to second homes: Property A produces roughly €1,800 in IMU for the year, and Property B — a larger unit with a higher cadastral value — produces roughly €2,400.
- Total IMU: approximately €4,200
Combined annual tax cost across both taxes: approximately €9,950, against €25,000 in gross rental income — before considering the CIN registration, safety compliance, platform fees, or property management costs covered separately in our CIN code guide. The IMU component alone is nearly as large as the cedolare secca bill on Property B, which is exactly the kind of gap that catches owners who budgeted only around the headline 21%/26% rates.
Conclusion
The 21%/26% cedolare secca rates are the least complicated part of owning a short-term rental in Italy as a non-resident. The real friction is procedural: knowing that the two-property cap is now the binding constraint rather than the old four-property ceiling, remembering that IMU is a completely separate bill with its own municipality-specific rate and its own June/December deadlines, filing the correct form (Modello Redditi PF, not 730) with the correct sections, and actually getting payment to the Agenzia delle Entrate when your bank account is not Italian. None of these steps are exotic once you know they exist — they are exactly the kind of detail that a first-time non-resident owner has no way of anticipating on their own.
Sources and Review Status
This article was last reviewed on 3 August 2026. Cedolare secca rules reflect the 2026 Budget Law (Legge n. 199/2025, Gazzetta Ufficiale 30 December 2025), which confirmed the differentiated 21%/26% rate structure and reduced the private-regime property cap from four to two, verified directly against Agenzia delle Entrate guidance. IMU rates and deadlines reflect Legge 160/2019 (statutory base 0.86%, municipal maximum 1.06%, with a further TASI-substitution increase to 1.14% possible in specific cases) and current municipal deliberations, which must be confirmed for the specific property's comune and current tax year. Non-resident filing mechanics (Modello Redditi PF, Quadro RB, F24 tax codes 1840/1841/1842) are based on Agenzia delle Entrate form instructions and payment guidance for taxpayers abroad. This article is informational, not tax advice; consult a qualified commercialista for a specific filing.
Official References
Giovanni Emmi|August 3, 2026
