Cedolare Secca: Italy's Flat-Rate Tax on Rental Income, Explained

Cedolare secca is Italy's optional flat substitute tax on income from a residential lease. Instead of adding the rent to the landlord's other income and paying IRPEF, the regional and municipal addizionali, plus registration and stamp duty on the contract, the landlord pays one flat rate on the rent and nothing else on the lease itself.

This page sets out how the rate is set, what changed for short-term rentals in 2026, and works a comparison against ordinary taxation with concrete numbers, since whether cedolare secca actually costs less depends on figures this page cannot know about any individual landlord. For the contract types cedolare secca applies to, see our companion page on rental contracts; for what happens when the rent goes unpaid, see eviction for unpaid rent.

Information verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice for an individual situation.

What cedolare secca replaces, and who can use it

Cedolare secca is available to an individual landlord, not a business or a professional acting as such, who owns or holds a qualifying real right over a residential unit let for housing use, together with any garage or other pertinenza let alongside it (art. 3, commi 1 and 6, D.Lgs. 14 marzo 2011, n. 23). Opting in replaces four separate items with one flat payment: IRPEF on the rental income, the regional and municipal addizionali that ride on top of it, the imposta di registro ordinarily owed on the lease and its renewals, and the imposta di bollo on the same documents.

The option is exercised when the lease is registered, or at a later renewal, through the Agenzia delle Entrate's RLI service, and it can be revoked in a following year. It does not apply where the landlord is letting in the course of a business or a profession; those lettings stay inside ordinary taxation regardless of the tenant or the property (art. 3, comma 6).

The two ordinary rates: 21 and 10 percent

Once inside the regime, the rate that applies depends on the contract type rather than on a separate choice. A canone libero contract, the 4 plus 4 form covered on our rental contracts page, is taxed at the standard 21 percent of the annual rent the parties actually agreed.

A canone concordato contract, the 3 plus 2 form agreed within bands set locally by the tenant and landlord associations, is taxed at a reduced 10 percent, but only where the property sits in a comune with such a local agreement in force, typically the larger cities and the communes bordering them. The reduced rate has been renewed by successive decrees since 2014 and currently stands at 10 percent (art. 2, comma 3, L. 431/1998; art. 3, comma 2, D.Lgs. 23/2011).

A worked comparison: cedolare secca against ordinary taxation

Take a straightforward case: a canone libero lease at 1.000 euro a month, 12.000 euro a year. Under cedolare secca, the tax is a flat 21 percent of that figure, 2.520 euro, and nothing else is owed on the lease itself.

Under ordinary taxation the rent is added to the landlord's other income at a reduced base. Art. 37, comma 4-bis of the Testo Unico delle Imposte sui Redditi (TUIR, D.P.R. 917/1986) lets a landlord who stays with ordinary taxation reduce the taxable rent by a flat 5 percent forfeit before it is added to income (a larger reduction, 25 or 35 percent, applies only to certain Venice properties or buildings of historic interest, neither of which applies here). That leaves 11.400 euro added to the top of the landlord's income, taxed at whichever marginal IRPEF bracket that slice falls into.

Italy's current brackets, after the Legge di Bilancio 2026 (L. 199/2025) cut the middle rate from 35 to 33 percent, are 23 percent up to 28.000 euro of total taxable income, 33 percent from 28.001 to 50.000 euro, and 43 percent above that. The same 11.400 euro of rental income therefore costs very different amounts depending on where it falls on top of the landlord's other income: 2.622 euro at 23 percent, 3.762 euro at 33 percent, or 4.902 euro at 43 percent, before the regional and municipal addizionali that ordinary IRPEF carries are even added.

Ordinary taxation also still owes the imposta di registro on the lease itself, 2 percent of the annual rent for every year of the contract's duration, 67 euro minimum, so 240 euro a year on this example, commonly split between the parties by custom though both remain jointly liable to the tax office, plus a modest imposta di bollo of 16 euro for every four written pages of the contract.

Put together, even the lowest IRPEF bracket in this example already costs more under ordinary taxation than the flat 2.520 euro once the registration tax is added, and the gap widens sharply at the 33 or 43 percent bracket. That illustrates the shape of the comparison; it is not a rule. A landlord's own bracket, their comune's addizionali, and any other deduction ordinary taxation would otherwise preserve all sit outside what this page can compute, so no single answer fits every landlord from a search result alone.

Locazioni brevi: 26 percent, reduced to 21 for one unit, and a new two-apartment cap

A locazione breve, a residential letting of no more than 30 days, including stays with linen and cleaning included, is not taxed at the ordinary cedolare secca rates. Where the landlord opts for the substitute tax, the standard rate is 26 percent of the gross amount received (art. 4, comma 2, D.L. 24 aprile 2017, n. 50, as amended by L. 213/2023).

A reduced 21 percent applies, but only to a single unit the taxpayer designates in that year's tax return; every other unit let short term in the same year is taxed at the full 26 percent. The designation is made once a year and cannot be reassigned retroactively.

From the 2026 tax year, the regime carries a further limit that did not exist before: it applies only where no more than two apartments are put to short-term letting in the year, down from the four-apartment limit that applied through 31 December 2025 (the two-apartment threshold is stated by the Agenzia delle Entrate itself; the underlying chain is reported as art. 1, comma 595, L. 178/2020 as amended by the Legge di Bilancio 2026, L. 199/2025, which could not be confirmed against the statutory text because that omnibus article runs to hundreds of commi). A landlord who lets a third apartment short term in the same year is presumed to be operating in business form for that activity, which takes the whole activity out of cedolare secca and into ordinary business taxation, VAT registration among the consequences.

That presumption applies to the activity as a whole, not just to the unit over the limit. Anyone weighing a third short-let unit should treat that change of regime, not the 26 versus 21 percent difference, as the number that actually matters.

What opting in costs the landlord: the frozen rent

Cedolare secca is not one-sided. Choosing it suspends, for as long as the option is in force, the landlord's right to ask for any increase in the rent for any reason, including the annual adjustment tied to the ISTAT consumer price index that an ordinary contract would otherwise allow (art. 3, comma 11, D.Lgs. 23/2011).

The suspension has no effect unless the landlord told the tenant about it in advance, by registered letter, expressly giving up the right to any rent update. The statute describes the rule as inderogabile, meaning the parties cannot contract around it. A landlord weighing the tax saving against several years of foregone ISTAT increases on a long lease is comparing two real costs, not one.

Three scenarios

A landlord letting a single apartment on a 4 plus 4 contract at 1.000 euro a month can use the comparison above directly: 2.520 euro a year under cedolare secca against a figure that depends on that landlord's own bracket once IRPEF, addizionali, and the 2 percent registration tax are added under ordinary taxation. Only that landlord's own accountant, working from the landlord's full income, can say which figure is actually lower for a given year.

A landlord letting two apartments to short-term guests through an online portal, several times a month each, keeps both units inside cedolare secca. One unit can be designated for the 21 percent rate in the tax return; the other is taxed at 26 percent. Staying at two apartments in the year keeps the whole activity inside the regime for 2026; adding a third unit would not.

A landlord who opted into cedolare secca on a 3 plus 2 canone concordato contract three years ago now wants to raise the rent to match a rising local market. The option suspends the right to any rent increase, ISTAT included, for as long as it runs. Ending the option lets the landlord ask for a market rent again at the contract's next renewal point, but does not allow a mid-option increase; the trade made at the time the option was chosen runs both ways.

Looking ahead: a 2027 recodification

A broader reform is already scheduled. D.Lgs. 19 giugno 2026, n. 117, the new Testo Unico delle imposte sui redditi, abrogates the current numbering of both the TUIR (D.P.R. 917/1986) and the cedolare secca statute itself (art. 3, D.Lgs. 23/2011), along with the locazioni brevi provision (art. 4, D.L. 50/2017), from 1 January 2027, folding them into a single consolidated text.

Public commentary so far describes this as a reorganization and renumbering exercise rather than a change to the rates set out on this page, in the same way a parallel 2027 recodification is reorganizing the succession-tax statutes. That characterization has not been independently verified article by article against the new text, so it is noted here as the direction of travel rather than a confirmed final word. Expect the article numbers on this page to change once 2027 arrives, even if the rates themselves do not.

Related pages

For the contract types cedolare secca applies to, see our page on rental contracts in Italy. For what happens when the rent goes unpaid, see eviction for unpaid rent. For the wider landscape of Italian law this site covers, see our Italy hub.