Carlo Stagnaro // 02 December 2025

The political clash over the ‘Airbnb tax’ in the new budget law is marginal from a financial point of view, but central from a cultural one.

The expected revenue is around €100 million, a small fraction of the budget (0.5 per cent of the €19 billion covered by the budget law) and a drop in the ocean of tax revenue (0.01 per cent of the expected €709 billion, net of social security contributions and other revenue). The government has chosen a cautious approach, and in order to achieve its stated goal of a deficit of less than 3 per cent, albeit by a small margin, it must balance revenue and expenditure. We would like to see greater emphasis on cutting expenditure, but we cannot fail to appreciate Minister Giorgetti's efforts to maintain and indeed accelerate the recovery process: this inevitably requires unpleasant choices on the tax front. Hence the first version of the regulation, which raised the flat-rate tax rate from 21 to 26 per cent for all types of short-term rentals. It should be noted that the 21 per cent rate applied only to individuals and to a single property per taxpayer. This was obviously a controversial choice, but consistent in its own way.

After understandable protests from homeowners, shared by some parties in the majority, the government corrected its aim and decided to apply the tax only to short-term rental contracts brokered by online platforms such as Airbnb and Booking. In practice, almost nothing has changed: for obvious reasons, the vast majority of these contracts are concluded through platforms that facilitate the search and comparison of offers; of the remaining contracts still stipulated “briefly”, realistically, quite a few disappear from the eyes of the tax authorities. From the perspective of the Ministry of Economy, this should be a decisive argument, not least because the platforms act as tax substitutes and therefore guarantee tax revenue. Yet, Luddite sentiment has prevailed over economic interest: this regulation will have little effect on the state budget and very little on the behaviour of owners and tourists, but it says a lot about the government's attitude towards innovation.

If the government had a real revenue target, it would take other measures. Instead, it is clearly sending a message: the fact that people are trying to improve their situation – i.e. the use of their assets or the organisation of their travel – by exploiting the means made available by technological progress should be penalised and restricted.

Unfortunately, the government must come to terms with a simple reality: a country can either grow or protect old practices, preventing the use of new ones, but it can never do both at the same time.

Carlo Stagnaro is Director of Research and Studies at Istituto Bruno Leoni in Italy.

This blog is a translation. Click here to read the original in Italian.