Five lessons learned from the building bonus system in Italy

If you are buying a house in Italy and are intending on benefitting from the system of detractions and deductions for the costs of building and renovating your property, then here are 5 things which we learned in our home restoration.

1. All payments must be made by traceable means i.e bonifico (bank transfer) or credit card payment. No trace, no bonus!
2. If paying by bonifico (bank transfer) then you need to pay by using the ‘bonifico per agevolazione fiscale’ option with your bank and NOT the ‘bonifico ordinario’ option. It asks for more information, such as the partitia IVA of the company / person you have worked with and this is needed for the bonus.
3. If you employ single workmen working alone then you don’t need an authorisation (SCIA or CIA) from the local authority but if they are a ‘dita edilizia’ (this can include even 2 people working together as a construction company) then you may need to have a ‘piano di sicurezza’ from an architect who will need to draw that up and provide you with the necessary numbers/reference codes. No ‘piano di sicurezza’ no bonus! (Our’s cost around €1000!)
4. Your workmen can apply for 10% IVA (VAT) on purchased items, but this is not necessarily a given. Our commercialista recommended that we signed a document ‘richiesta di applicazione dell’IVA ad aliquota ridotta’ for each workman / company so they would be authorised to apply for it as the materials would fall under the approved renovation works. Obviously, the Agenzia delle Entrate have the right to investigate these events in the future and so we did the maximum possible to avoid future problems. Documents should be kept for 10 years.
5. Try and employ local workmen or businesses which operate in the area, because if you have problems in the future you want to be able to get hold of them quickly and easily.