Episode Details

Luca: I’m excited about yet another episode of the Magic Towns Italy podcast. Are you excited, Anna?

Anna: Yeah, I’m super excited also because we are talking about a really interesting topic, right?

Luca: We always do. What’s this topic?

Anna: So we were gonna keep talking about the most search towns in 2026, but we are pushing that to next week because that’s some really, really important tax news if you’re thinking about buying or fixing up a home in Italy.

Luca: That is right. We are going to talk about Italy’s home renovation tax breaks for 2026.

2026 is actually a bit of a special year. We’ve even called it the last really good year to renovate with meaningful tax breaks. We’re going to talk about what incentives that are there now, especially compared to the crazy, [00:01:00] Superbonus 110% from a few years before.

Anna: Oh yeah, that bonus, the government basically paid you more than what you spent.

Crazy, right?

Luca: Yes. I would say that Superbonus, born in 2020 let homeowners claim 110% of the renovation costs as a tax credit and in practice that meant that you could renovate your house and make a 10% profit in tax credits. It was the government paying for your renovation effectively.

Anna: Yeah.

Suddenly everyone was changing windows. Installing solar panels. But that, that couldn’t last forever, right?

Luca: Yeah. The bill was astronomical. The super bonus blew a hole in Italy ‘s finances. The economy minister said that these incentives had a devastating impact on public Between one and the other these bonuses have cost 219 billion [00:02:00] euro.

Anna: Oh my God, that’s insane. Like Italy basically threw hundreds of billions at home makeovers.

Luca: The initial plan was for the scheme to cost maybe 35 billion Euro that is short up to a hundred around the 160 billion euro in just four years.

And the worst thing is that because the government was effectively paying for people to renovate their home, the construction costs also went up by a lot. Uh, people weren’t even negotiating prices. I mean, uh, and why would they care if the state was paying for it? And did lead to some abuse.

Anna: Yeah, I heard about the scams.

People were definitely taking advantage.

Luca: Yeah, taking advantage of the system. Um, so far, about 12 billion in fraudulent claims had been found out. Prime Minister Meloni called it the biggest scandal that the state has ever suffered. So there has been a lot of backlash on this tax scheme. And we could do an entire podcast about what went wrong with 110% super bonus.[00:03:00]

So it shouldn’t be surprising that these incentives have been dialed back.

Anna: So the Superbonus is basically done now, right?

Luca: As of right now, January, 2026, the Superbonus, 105% is completely scrapped , for any of our listeners, this scheme is effectively over.

Anna: Oh, okay. So no more free renovation for us. I mean, it was good while it lasted, but um, what about now? Like, if 2026 is the last good year, what can we actually get this year?

Luca: That’s a good question. The government has not completely abandoned helping renovators, and in fact, uh, three of the key programs, the Bonus Casa, which is the oldest of them, has existed for maybe 20 years, the Ecobonus and Sismabonus have all been extended, but at lower rates and with simpler rules.

Anna: Wait, but what’s the difference between them?

Luca: So in a [00:04:00] nutshell, Bonus Casa is the general renovation bonus, um, in Italian’s called the Bonus Ristrutturazioni