Tax returns

Home bonus on the brakes, Irpef rises for incomes from 29,000 euro

52% of taxpayers with medium to high income use incentives. Among the over 75 thousand in 2025 discount of at least 1,700 euro: this year the mix of reduced deductions, cap on charges and lower expenses weighs in

by Dario Aquaro and Cristiano Dell'Oste

11 May 2026

RIQUALIFICAZIONE CASE CON I BONUS STATALI PALAZZO EDILIZIA ABITATIVA CASA POPOLARE POPOLARI OPERAIO EDILE CASCO ELMETTO SICUREZZA SUL LAVORO CASCHI ELMETTI
OPERAI EDILI IMAGOECONOMICA — RIQUALIFICAZIONE CASE CON I BONUS STATALI PALAZZO EDILIZIA ABITATIVA CASA POPOLARE POPOLARI OPERAIO EDILE CASCO ELMETTO SICUREZZA SUL LAVORO CASCHI ELMETTI OPERAI EDILI IMAGOECONOMICA

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Timing leaner in the pay packet and Irpef more expensive. With this year's tax returns, the decline in home bonus will begin to be seen. Potentially at least one out of every four taxpayers is affected, looking at those who indicated deductions for building renovation on their 730 and 2025 income forms. But the percentage is close to 52% among the 13 million people who declare an income over 29 thousand euro, with peaks of 70-80% in the highest income brackets.

In fact, for these individuals - who pay the bulk of the Irpef - the home bonuses in recent declarations have eased the tax burden by 1-2 points in terms of average effective tax rate, counting also the ecobonus. It seems little, but the effect for individual beneficiaries can be as much as several thousand euros.

How much and for whom the tax savings will be reduced will be seen from Thursday 14 May, when it will be possible to modify and send in the pre-filled 730 form. At that time, many property owners will touch the effect - direct or indirect - of the cuts enacted by various governments to curb public spending burdened by the superbonus.

Bonus ristrutturazioni, i quattro fattori che possono diminuire le detrazioni nella precompilata

The 'bonus size' factors

There are four factors that can concretely reduce benefits at the individual and aggregate level.

The first factor is thenatural expiry of the old allowances. Those who carried out the work in recent years, choosing the deduction route (instead of the assignment or the discount on the invoice) do not risk anything; on the contrary, they have found the deductible instalment of expenditure already 'copied' in the 730 form put online last 30 April by the Inland Revenue. But those who carried out the subsidised interventions in 2015 have discharged in 2025 the last instalment and from this year will see their reimbursement in their pay envelope reduced or reduced to zero (unless they have renovated another house in the meantime).

On an aggregate level, if there is no turnover between those who finish deducting and those who start, the number of beneficiaries will thin out. Of course, we are talking about a decline that will take a few years to come to fruition - since the current bonus recovery is mostly ten years - but the contraction has begun. And this brings us to the second factor: in the 2026 models, instalment '1' will be less widespread and less rich than in those of 12 months earlier. This is because less is invested in 2025. The transfers made by private individuals to pay for works stopped at 32.1 billion, the lowest amount in the last five years and down 25.1% compared to 42.8 billion in 2024. The reduction is reflected in the data communicated to the Inland Revenue by banks and condominium administrators to feed the precompilata: 8 million payments referred to individual property units (-24.5% year-on-year) and 7.3 million for common condominium parts (-2.1%), according to the Agency.

The third aspect to bear in mind is that the basic deduction since 2025 has dropped to 36% and remained at 50% only for the main dwelling. The exact share, however, will only be known at the end of the year. In the pre-filled 2026 tax return, the data for transfers to individual units can be found in the information sheet, and it is the taxpayer who has to enter them, indicating the 36 or 50 per cent deduction; those for common parts are generally pre-filled with 36 per cent, and if this is the case, the percentage has to be changed.

The last factor that comes into play in the 2026 declarations is the limit of deductible expenses for taxpayers with an income over 75 thousand euro. A limit linked to the number of dependent children and, in any case, more stringent for those who declare over 100 thousand euro. It is true that Italians with an income over 75 thousand euro are only 3.3% of the total, but home bonuses are widespread among them.

The cut is only on expenses paid from 2025. In certain cases, however, exceeding the ceiling does not seem difficult. The average value of home bonuses indicated in the latest declarations helps to frame the extent of the risk: the average deduction for renovations is 1,784 euro in the income bracket between 75 thousand and 120 thousand euro, and rises to 2,874 euro in the bracket between 120 thousand and 300 thousand euro. Knowing that the upper limit does not count the deduction, but the subsidised expenditure - which we can estimate to be about twice as much - we can draw the identikit of those who are most likely to incur the cut:

taxpayers over 100 thousand euro of income (for them the maximum ceiling is 8 thousand euro, instead of 14 thousand);
people who have done major works combining the renovation bonus with the ecobonus (1.451 average annual deduction between 75,000 and 120,000 euro of income);
people without children (which effectively halve the limit, e.g. 4,000 euro over 100,000 euro of income);
people with below-threshold income, with whom they share deductible expenses so as not to exceed the ceiling (and perhaps not even cohabiting relatives, who would only get 36% but at least would not lose the bonus).

Smaller construction sites or postponed

Against this backdrop, those who run into the instalment deadline or the cut of the 2025 spending bonus have little recourse to try to safeguard the 'old-fashioned' refunds in their pay envelope. Given that no one decides to renovate a house just because there are concessions (only the superbonus and the facade bonus had that strength), the push for work today is certainly less generous than when there was the 50% for all, the ecobonus, the sismabonus and the barrier bonus with higher percentages, as well as the transfer of credit or the invoice discount.

The impression is that many owners choose to reducethe budget or wait for better times for deferrable works. This is shown by the data on 2025 transfers reconstructed from the Tax Revenue Bulletin. But also those referring to the first two months of this year, published last Tuesday: between January and February transfers for 3.22 billion were made, +2% compared to 3.16 last year. While the descent seems to have stopped, it must be said that - net of inflation - we are on similar or lower values than in 2019, before the extra-large bonus season.