A very important news in our vacation rental industry: the database of accommodation businesses and properties intended for short-term rentals (which from now on I will call the short-term rental database).

Legislative references

The legislative references are as follows: Article 13-quater of the decree-law of 30 April 2019, n. 34 converted with amendments by the law of 28 June 2019, n. 58 and the ministerial decree prot. 1782 of 29 September 2021, containing the methods for creating and managing the database.

What is the short term rental database?

The Italian State has created a database in which to register all the accommodation actovities and properties intended for short-term, therefore vacation rentals. If you rent a property to tourists: you must register your property in the database. For technical and detailed information, I refer to this article on Fisco e Tasse. Here, however, I quickly explain what it is.

Once you have registered your property in the database, the system assigns it an alphanumeric identification code. This code will represent the property in all online and offline publications (for example, do you publish the property on a rental website to acquire your guests? You must also publish the code). If the regions have already adopted their own regional identification code, the latter is valid.

The database will collect various information on the properties for vacation rentals:
a) type of accommodation;
b) location;
c) accommodation capacity;
d) details of the qualifications;
e) subject who carries out the hospitality business;
f) regional identification code, where adopted, or alphanumeric code.

How does it work in Puglia?

Puglia, having already adopted the CIS – Structure Identification Code, should automatically send this information to the national database. To understand how to obtain the CIS if you have not yet requested it, click on our guide.

What are the implications for our short-term rental industry?

Personally, I think these are two of the most relevant points.

1) The mandatory nature of the alphanumeric code will shortly cut off all those who do not have it.

It is expected, in fact, that within a few months, in order to publish your property on OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) such as Booking.com or channels such as Airbnb, … it will be necessary to enter the code in a field. This is because the giants of online holiday brokerage are moving towards ever greater collaboration with the state. Registering your property in the database also means emerging from anonymity. And here we move on to the next point.

2) Fight against tax evasion in the tourism sector

As written in the 2022 budget law, art. 21: “For the purposes of combating tax and social security evasion, the database is accessible to the financial administration of creditors for institutional purposes”.

These are all public administrations and public bodies (over 20 thousand) which include, in addition to the Agenzia delle Entrate, INPS and Inail, also the eight thousand Italian municipalities, including the approximately one thousand municipalities that apply the city tax. All of these entities have claims on citizens and businesses.

Basically: it will be increasingly difficult to escape tax payments, city tax payments and everything related to the tax burden of a vacation rental.

To learn more, I refer you to this article from which I took a cue Banca dati Affitti brevi, il Governo cala la scure anti evasione: ecco come staneranno i furbetti.

If we are on the right track, only the time and the application of the short rental database will tell. For the moment we advise all owners to adapt as soon as possible.