Lending or renting your home to your child in Trieste: ILIA, tax

Lending your second home in Trieste to your son or daughter free of charge (comodato), with the contract registered, halves the ILIA tax base: in this guide's example you pay €311.64 a year instead of €1,246.56. If you rent it to them instead on a 3+2 regulated lease (canone concordato) at €400 a month, you take in €4,800 and pay €1,053.30 of it in flat-rate tax (cedolare secca) and ILIA. The two routes also have different rules for getting the home back.

What a comodato is, and how it differs from a lease

In a comodato one party hands a home to the other to use for a set time or purpose, and then give back. It is essentially free (Civil Code, art. 1803): if your child pays you anything to live there, it is a lease, with its own rules and taxes.

Whoever receives the home pays the costs of using it and cannot claim them back; you reimburse only extraordinary costs that were necessary and urgent to preserve it (art. 1808). In Trieste the waste tax (TARI) is owed jointly by whoever owns and whoever occupies the home (the City's TARI regulation, art. 5): usually the occupant pays it.

Does the comodato have to be registered?

If it is in writing, yes: within 30 days of signing, paying the flat €200 registration tax and stamp duty (€16 for each block of 4 pages, or of 100 lines). The form is RAP: send it online or take it to an Agenzia delle Entrate counter.

If it is verbal, registration is compulsory only when the comodato is mentioned in another deed that must be registered. But the reduced ILIA requires a registered contract: so it pays to write it down.

ILIA in Trieste on a home you lend: what does it cost?

Under the regional ILIA law (since 2023 it stands in for IMU here) the base falls by 50% when the home is lent to your children or your parents (relatives of the first degree in the direct line) (Regional Law 17/2022, art. 8). The City of Trieste lists the conditions, all of them together:

1. the home is not registered as a luxury dwelling (cadastral A/9, A/8 or A/1);
2. the contract is registered with the Agenzia delle Entrate;
3. your child, or parent, has their habitual dwelling and registered residence there;
4. you own only one home in the region; in addition, the home you live in, in the same municipality, is allowed, if it is not a luxury one;
5. you have your residence and habitual dwelling in the same municipality as the lent home.

If a single condition is missing, the reduction is lost. To claim it, you fill in the relevant field of the ILIA return.

On the rate, Trieste sets 0.53% for a home lent on those same conditions, if it is also the first building for residential use other than your main home, notified to the Region under art. 13 bis (deadline: 30 June of the next year). If you do not notify it, the 1.06% for other residential buildings applies.

And income tax?

On homes that earn no rent, including those lent free, you normally pay ILIA instead of IRPEF. The exception: if the home is in the same municipality as your main home, its income enters IRPEF at 50% (instructions to the 2026 730 tax return, code 3 of the "special cases" column).

In the 730 return, a home lent to a family member who lives there with their residence is entered with code 10. The income is the cadastral income revalued by 5%, without the one-third increase for homes kept at your disposal.

Can I take back a home I have lent?

It depends on how you wrote the contract.

• With a set term (three years, for example), your child returns the home when it ends. Before then, only if you suddenly have an urgent and unforeseen need (art. 1809).
• With a purpose ("to live there with their family"), the term may follow from that very purpose: while it lasts, the same urgent-need rule applies.
• With no term and no purpose that sets one, the home comes back as soon as you ask (art. 1810).

If you think you may sell it or want it back, write in a term.

An example: the one-bedroom flat in Rozzol

Stated assumptions: you live in Trieste in a home you own; you own a one-bedroom flat in Rozzol, category A/2, with cadastral income of €700; you have no other homes in the region; your daughter moves in and takes up residence; your income stays between €28,000 and €50,000, that is, at 33% plus the regional (1.23%) and Trieste municipal (0.8%) surcharges.

Registered comodato

1. ILIA base: 700 × 1.05 × 160 = €117,600; cut by 50%: €58,800.
2. ILIA at 0.53% (first building reported): €311.64. Without the report, at 1.06%: €623.28.
3. IRPEF: 700 × 1.05 × 50% = €367.50 of income, at 35.03%: €128.74.
4. Total per year: €440.38, plus, once, the €200 registration tax and stamp duty.

3+2 regulated lease at €400 a month (an assumed rent, to be checked against the ranges of the territorial agreement)

1. Rent: 12 × 400 = €4,800.
2. Cedolare at 10%: €480.
3. ILIA: 117,600 × 0.65% × 75% = €573.30.
4. Taxes: €1,053.30; you keep €3,746.70 a year.

• Income for you

  €4,800

  Comodato: €0

• Taxes per year

  €1,053.30

  Comodato: €440.38

• One-off

  certificate of compliance (attestazione di rispondenza), to attach to the ILIA return

  Comodato: €200 + stamp duty

• Getting the home back

  at the 3+2 expiry dates, on the grounds the law allows

  Comodato: at the term or for urgent need

If your daughter really has the €400 a month, the lease moves €3,746.70 a year within the family, after tax. If she does not, the comodato costs €440.38.

When a lease makes more sense

• When your child can and wants to pay rent: with cedolare at 10% and reduced ILIA, tax takes about a fifth of it.
• When you own several homes in the region, so the ILIA reduction on a comodato is not available to you.
• When you want clear rules on duration. The 3+2 expiry dates are those of Law 431/1998; how the lease works is explained in the guide to regulated rent in Trieste.