Italy's tourist tax: who collects it, and who answers for it

The party who pays Italy's tourist tax to the municipality is the property's manager, not the guest who hands over cash at the desk: that has been the law since 2020, under paragraph 1-ter of article 4 of legislative decree 23/2011. Before then, a late payment could trigger a criminal case for embezzlement; on 23 January 2026 Italy's Supreme Court Joint Sections closed the last open question too, over which court has jurisdiction: tax court, not the Court of Auditors.

Two different duties: who pays, and who remits

The tourist tax has two distinct parties, and mixing them up causes most of the confusion. The one who pays the tax is the guest who stays overnight: that's what paragraph 1 of article 4 of legislative decree no. 23 of 14 March 2011 says, the law that lets provincial capitals, unions of municipalities, and tourist destinations or art cities designated by the regions introduce it.

The one who remits the tax to the municipality, instead, is the property's manager. Since 19 May 2020 the law itself has said so, in precise terms: article 180, paragraph 3, of decree-law 34/2020 (the "Relaunch Decree", converted by law no. 77 of 17 July 2020) inserted paragraph 1-ter into article 4 of decree 23/2011, stating that "the manager of the accommodation facility is liable for the payment of the tourist tax [...], with a right of recourse against the taxpayers". This isn't collection on someone else's behalf: it's the manager's own debt to the municipality, with a right, not a precondition, to recover it from the guest.

Before 2020 this wording didn't exist for the ordinary tourist tax: in the same article, it only applied to the landing fee charged on the smaller islands. That's why, for nearly a decade, the manager's legal standing was fought over on two separate fronts, one about public accounting, one criminal, which I cover below.

Does the manager pay even if the guest never did?

Yes. The right of recourse the law gives the manager runs against the guest, not as a condition for the debt owed to the municipality: if the guest doesn't pay, the manager still has to remit what's due and can then seek reimbursement from them, not the other way round. Italy's Supreme Court Joint Civil Sections restated this in the January 2026 order covered in the next section, citing their own 2024 tax-law precedent, order no. 6187 of 7 March 2024: the manager must pay the amount owed even when they never collected it from the guest.

Until 2021: the risk was embezzlement

Before the 2020 reform, how to classify a manager who collected the tax was an open fight on two fronts.

On the accounting side, the Court of Auditors had started treating the manager as a "public accounting officer": whoever handles money destined for a public body, even without a formal appointment, must account for it like a public official, with personal financial liability for any amount not remitted. That was established by the Court of Auditors, Joint Sections, in ruling no. 22/QM of 22 September 2016, later confirmed on jurisdiction by Italy's Supreme Court Joint Civil Sections in order no. 19654 of 24 July 2018.

A real case shows what that meant in practice: the Veneto regional section of the Court of Auditors, in ruling no. 205/2021, ordered the owner of a Venice B&B to pay the municipality 23,582.60 euros in damages to the public purse, for tourist tax collected between 2012-2014 and 2016-2018 and never remitted.

On the criminal side, the same delay could trigger a prosecution for embezzlement under article 314 of the criminal code. The Court of Cassation, sixth criminal section, in ruling no. 32058 of 12 July 2018, upheld the conviction of the legal representative of a Turin property, who had collected roughly 15,000 euros in tourist tax over the first three quarters of 2015 without remitting it to the municipality: two years in prison, set on appeal and confirmed by the Court of Cassation.

2020 and 2021 shift the duty from criminal to tax law

Paragraph 1-ter, introduced in 2020, changes the nature of the obligation: the manager no longer handles public money as an accounting officer, but is liable for paying their own debt to a taxing body, with a right of recourse against the guest.

That change alone wasn't enough to immediately close proceedings over conduct from before 2020: between 2020 and 2021 the Court of Cassation's criminal sections (sixth section, rulings no. 30227/2020 and no. 36317/2020; first section, ruling no. 41793/2021) ruled that the reform didn't apply to the past, leaving the embezzlement risk standing for delays before 19 May 2020.

The legislature then stepped in: article 5-quinquies of decree-law 146/2021, converted by law 215/2021, gave an authentic, retroactive interpretation of the "taxpayer liable" classification, extending it to conduct before 19 May 2020 too. In 2022, the Court of Cassation's criminal section, in ruling no. 9213 of 17 March, concerning a property in Como, drew the consequence: the conduct is no longer defined as a crime by law, not even for the past. Only an administrative tax penalty remains.

January 2026: jurisdiction settled too

One point, though, stayed open longer than expected: which court does a municipality turn to if a manager doesn't pay, the tax court or the Court of Auditors? Regional prosecutors at the Court of Auditors kept arguing for their own jurisdiction until quite recently: that's shown by the very case that settled the question, which started from a proceeding brought by the Veneto regional prosecutor's office against the manager of a property in Montegrotto Terme, over tourist tax from 2022-2023 left unpaid.

Italy's Supreme Court Joint Civil Sections, in order no. 1527 of 23 January 2026, found that the Court of Auditors lacks jurisdiction: after the 2020 reform, the manager's obligation is purely a tax matter, the "accounting officer" classification no longer applies, and disputes between a municipality and a manager fall exclusively to the tax court.

The penalties that remain today

With the criminal risk gone, two levels of administrative penalty remain, both set by paragraph 1-ter and echoed in municipal regulations.

The two don't cancel each other out, they add up: Florence's regulation states this explicitly, "the imposition of penalties [...] does not exempt from paying the evaded tax". And it's the smaller, procedural penalties that managers trip over most often, out of simple oversight: a missed periodic report or an unkept record, not the payment itself.

If the booking comes through a platform, who pays?

The law names the manager of the accommodation facility, not whoever intermediates the booking: a platform doesn't become liable for payment just because it collected a deposit or a guarantee payment.

The Court of Cassation, second civil section, confirmed this in order no. 18018 of 23 June 2023: a municipality had sued both the owner of a holiday property and the platform the booking came through, and the first-instance court had held only the platform liable, because it collected the payments. The Court of Cassation overturned that ruling: the platform isn't the final recipient of the payment, the amount paid upfront works as a guarantee, and the tax is owed to the property during the stay.

A different case is that of short-term rentals where the platform itself collects the entire rent on the host's behalf: under that model, set out in paragraph 5-ter of article 4 of decree-law 50/2017, the intermediary handling the payment also becomes liable for the tourist tax. That's why Airbnb has collected and automatically remitted the tax in over 1,200 Italian municipalities since February 2024, according to the platform's own statement. It's a consequence of how that platform handles payment, not a short-term-rental exemption: it depends on the payment model, not on the type of property. If your bookings come through a platform that doesn't collect the full stay amount, the duty to pay the tax stays yours, whichever platform it is.

What to check, in practice

Three checks, in order. First, check your municipality's own regulation for the annual declaration deadline and how often you must report, because these vary from one municipality to another, and a delay here draws the more frequent penalty, not the heaviest one. Second, keep the records that show what you collected and remitted, for as long as your municipal regulation requires, because that's what holds up under a review, not having paid in good faith. Third, if you use a booking engine or management software that calculates the tax automatically, check that it actually follows the exemptions your regulation sets out, since these vary by municipality too: software set up once and never checked again is the most common cause of a figure that doesn't add up.

Anyone with doubts about a notice they've already received needs an accountant or a tax specialist, not a digital consultant: this piece gives you the picture, not a ruling on your specific case. But if the question is how your website, your booking engine or your management software handle the tourist tax, alongside other requirements like the CIN code or Alloggiati Web reporting, there's the digital check-up. Otherwise write to me: tell me how you handle the tax today, and I'll tell you whether the process you're using exposes your property to a risk you're not seeing.