Italian tax

Get a good commercialista...one that has other ex-pat clients and is used to dealing with their needs.

Get a Commercialista, as A & R say. Don't try and avoid complying with the regulations on Holiday Lets, as you will be found out and dealt with accordingly.

Yes, get a commercialista - but.  If you are resident and its your first home there are tax breaks on current year income on restoration or modernisation.  These cannot be offset against anything else other than your irpef for the current year - so what you propose would never work. in fact offsetting anything against future income is impossible here.  Whether you need IVA all depends on how you classify your business and what you do. 

Ram is right... as usual. And you do need a good commercialista to guide you. Best wishes!

Sorry Stephen, Modena not my area, but try a Google (usual stuff Modena, Commecialista, English Speaking etc), or try for any Expat Associations in that area. Good Luck for the future.

An accountantis the best choice, in my website < www.lifeinitaly.it > - you can find a list of professionals who speak English - the laws on vacation rentals in Italy are different from region to region, but in principle if the income that you from your holiday home does not exceed 75% of your total income, you can rent without having to apply for a license and a  VAT  number

on whether you are B&B, casevacanze or affittacamere - with the services provided.  Some businesses require a partita IVA from scratch, others like B&B do not .... 

I agree with Ugo, translation, particularly in the field of legal texts can be very tricky. The chances of misinterpreting the contents can be very high. Even amongst the translation professionals there are specialist in legal texts. The best advice is to get a commercialista to guide you. Money well spent.

It is normal to use them but not for me.  They can tell you what to do and then explain later why it didn't work. I remember some time ago in an old Italian colony called Argentina which has a horrendous bureacracy being able to go to a library and copy some rules to explain to a bureaucrat the correct procedure. If I had used a local lawyer I would probably still be there. However this renting out a place for a few hours at a time and not being considered as a landlord for tax purposes seems to have possibilities.

The laws on affittacamere have changed - you can rent them like a B&B but each room must have cooking facilities, telephone etc - or you can rent them as a cas vacanza - without the cooking facilities but with everything else.  If you have a house full of what are basically bedsits - then you will need a partita IVA, if its a room off your garage you wont - it all depends how you want to run your businesss. 

 the Italian way to write the laws and to interpret them is certainly different from all other countries in the world -

And so we need to hire professionals and pay them lots of money to deal with this due to our inability to understand these extremely complicated things, is that it?

Thanks to all that have contributed to my question. I am very slowly getting to grips with my Italian language skills and thoroughly enjoying the experience. I will not be providing Bed and breakfast. Just a three bedroom top floor apartment with its own cooking facilities and hopefully a pool in time. Any rent would not reach 75% of total income. If I have understood correctly, this means that I will not need to apply for registration or be VAT registered. As it would appear that I can not set off any initial capital expentiduture against future rental income, is there a % limit of annual expenditure that can be set off each year or does this depend upon the locality? I will be looking up Commercialistas in my area with ex pat experience. Thanks to all once again

Stephen, a lot of the rules are Regional so will differ from area to area. Generally though you could rent as 'appartamento amobiliato per uso turistico' so long as it is not rented for more that 30 days or available for more than 6 months of the year (these are the rules in Marche). Even if the rules in your area are slightly different then the classification is the same. It requires no P.IVA nor any particular size, facilities etc. so long as you have less than 4 units. You can just put the income on your Italian tax return and you will pay IRPEF on it. You can choose a special scheme whereby you hand over 21% to the tax man, no more tax is due but you cannot offset any of the expenses of running the appartment. You would need advice to see if this is better for you. It sounds like the 'appartamento amobiliato per uso turistico' would apply to you and it is the simplest, least beurocratic way to do it that I have found. Usually you need to give a notification to the comune (details will vary) and keep statistics for the regional tourist board and complete the Polizia dello Stato tourist registration forms for each new guest. You can offset certain renovation costs against your Italian tax bill but there are procedures that need to be complied with and the offset will take place over 10 years so you might decide it's not worth it. Your geometra should know about the procedures and ask the accountant about whether it is worth it. I would say find a GOOD accountant - forget whether they speak English or not and then use a GOOD translator. A bit more expensive but, certainly in Marche and I imagine it is the same everywhere, there have been plenty of incompetent (or just dishonest) professionals who have got work just because they speak English! Better to have someone with a good reputation and pay for the translation.

Thanks for your thoughts Penny. I had not thought of restricting the period when the house could be available for let. Presumably if it is available for 12 months of the year the rules will be quite different. I will start asking locals for commercialista recommendations.  

AFAIK you cannot use cedolare secca on holiday lets.  You need a registered contract to take advantage of the legistlation which a holiday let doesnt provide. 

Thanks Ram, It is becoming obvious that there is no 'one size fits all' solution due either to the over complex legislation in the first place or that local Communes can adjust the legislation to suit themselves. This appears to result in fear all round resulting in most resorting to a Commercialista to prevent any nasty surprises or worse still trying to avoid their responsibilies through other means. Once I have invested my money and got my advice I will return to this subject for the benefit of others that want to suppliment their incomes by letting part of their house out for holiday use. I hope that I will also learn to relax which is the whole point of moving to this beautiful country in the first place!!!!!!!!!!!

That's a good point RAM. Back to the accountants again! Just found this though so we can use it for contracts of less than 30 days: http://www.cedolaresecca.net/faq/faq.html

I happily stand corrected - according to your site you can use Cedolare secca for tourist contracts....