Textbooks also among 19% deductible school expenses

The Budget Law 2026 could also bring as a dowry to Italian families the extension to the purchase of textbooks of the 19% deduction already provided for other school expenses (canteen, registration and attendance fees, trips, etc.). At least according to some government sources. If this were the case, an old request by booksellers would be implemented.

The news comes at the same time as a new estimate by the Italian Publishers' Association on the expenditure for textbooks in 2025, which is equal, for state secondary schools, to an average of 190 euros per year. While for secondary schools it ranges from 167 euros for vocational institutes to 279 euros for high schools and 241 euros for technical institutes (excluding the purchase of dictionaries).

In a note, the Aie returns to the estimates already circulated at the end of July and recalls that the growth in school book prices compared to 2024 (list on list) is 1.7% for middle school and 1.8% for high school. Increases that publishers describe as in line with inflation (1.7% in July 2025, preliminary Istat data). These figures make Giorgio Riva, president of Aie's Educational Group, say: "The issue of the right to study and the economic sustainability for families of spending on school books is central for us publishers: it must be tackled on the basis of correct data".

In his view, it is 'misleading, as has been the case over the past month, to make analyses and raise alarms on the basis of aggregated, unverified data, whereby expenditure on school textbooks is drowned in a cauldron that also includes schoolbags, exercise books, and much more, with absolute values and year-on-year percentage increases that are much higher than those for books alone and whose variability is very wide and depends, among other things, on the free choice of branded or unbranded materials by families'.

For Riva, 'the increase in textbook prices is far from having recovered the inflationary increase. Businesses cannot take it upon themselves to guarantee the right to study for all and every Italian student, and so public intervention is needed along two lines: deduction of expenses for the purchase for all families, as there already is for expenses for health, sports and pets, and greater rationalisation and efficiency in the process of distributing aid to families in absolute poverty, funds that must reach the beneficiaries and do so quickly'. Thus effectively promoting the measure being studied by the executive, which - it should be emphasised - could be tied to income thresholds (to contain costs).