Home bonus, expenses down 25% in 2026 declarations
The value of transfers made last year dropped to 32.1 billion, compared to 42.8 billion in 2024. End of the 110% wave weighs the cut in the allowance on second homes
Key points
Less wealthy taxpayers, thrifty taxpayers. Discouraged also by the 36% tax deduction on second homes, last year property owners spent 10.7 billion euro less on renovation and energy-saving work subsidised by the tax authorities, stopping at 32.1 billion. The drop - calculated by Il Sole 24 Ore starting from the banks' deductions on 'talking' transfers - is 25% compared to 2024.
The reduction in investments, however, is not only due to the fact that from 2025 the standard deduction of 50 per cent has been limited to main dwellings (leaving other properties - precisely - 36 per cent). Also affecting, at various levels, are the other measures adopted by the Draghi and - above all - Meloni governments to slow down expenditure that had soared in the hottest superbonus season. The gradual 110% cut started in 2023 and culminated last year. The freeze on loan sales, which started in February 2023 and was gradually extended until it became total. The exclusion of condensation boilers from subsidised work (imposed since last year by EU rules). The limit on deductible expenses paid from 2025 for taxpayers with income over 75,000 euro.
The End of the Wave
Looking at the last few years, the impression is that the long wave of extraordinary work that began after Covid is fading . This is probably also influenced by the fact that a proportion of taxpayers have brought forward their work in order to take advantage of richer benefits. One only has to look at the figure for December 2024, the month in which transfers amounting to 10.6 billion were made, an all-time record since the Revenue Bulletin has been recording this information: without this rush of payments, 2024 would also have closed with a year-on-year decline (by almost 9 per cent). On the contrary, in the run-up to 31 December there was no final rush of transfers: on the contrary, in relative terms, the November figure worsened.
Despite the reduction,the 32.1 billion spent in 2025 remains well above the 23.3 billion in 2019, the last pre-Covid year with 'normal' bonuses. This gap should not be misleading, however, because it also includes inflation that has inflated prices (just considering the 'general' index, the 23.3 billion in 2019 is equivalent to 27.5 billion last year).
The high income cut-off
There are also variables that are difficult to quantify, at least for now. One is the share of jobs that might have been done in the black, as repeatedly feared by several observers.
