Accounting software for Italian businesses

How Italian IVA works

The points below describe the Italian regime itself, not HelloBooks — they are the rules your books have to line up with.

Standard rate — 22%

The aliquota ordinaria, applied to most goods and services.

Reduced rates — 10% and 5%

Italy operates two reduced rates. 10% covers categories such as restaurant and bar service, hotel accommodation and passenger transport; 5% is a narrower band applying to specific listed supplies.

Super-reduced rate — 4%

Applies to categories such as essential foodstuffs, books and newspapers, and first-home purchases.

Regime forfettario

A special regime for eligible individual businesses and professionals, built around a EUR 85,000 ceiling on the previous year revenues. Receipts between EUR 85,000 and EUR 100,000 end it from the following year; passing EUR 100,000 ends it immediately. Forfettari hold a partita IVA but neither charge nor deduct IVA.

Monthly liquidation is the default

Quarterly liquidation is an option where previous-year turnover did not exceed EUR 500,000 for services or EUR 800,000 for other activities, and normally carries 1% interest.

Payment dates

Monthly liquidations are paid by the 16th of the following month. The optional quarterly dates fall around 16 May, 20 August and 16 November, with the final quarter settled through the annual balance the following March.

LIPE — the periodic communication

The Comunicazione delle liquidazioni periodiche IVA reports your calculations to the Agenzia delle Entrate. It is quarterly even for businesses that liquidate monthly, with deadlines at the end of May, September and November and, for the final quarter, the end of the following February.

Dichiarazione IVA annuale

The annual IVA return is filed electronically between 1 February and 30 April of the following year — a separate obligation from paying the annual balance.

Fattura Elettronica via SdI

Businesses and professionals resident or established in Italy must issue invoices electronically through the Sistema di Interscambio, covering B2B, B2C and public-sector invoices. Forfettari have been inside the mandate since 1 January 2024. An Italian IVA registration alone does not bring a foreign business into it.

Where it is filed

The Agenzia delle Entrate, through its electronic services.

From your ledger to the liquidazione

Every sales document carries its IVA rate and every purchase carries the IVA detraibile you can recover. At the end of each period those lines are totalled into the liquidazione: operazioni imponibili by rate, IVA sulle vendite, non-imponibile and exempt supplies, IVA detraibile, and the resulting IVA dovuta or credito. You check the figures against the transactions behind them, then carry them across yourself or hand them to your commercialista. HelloBooks sends nothing to the Agenzia delle Entrate.

The bank feed keeps the ledger current between periods: transactions arrive, AI categorisation proposes the account and the IVA treatment, and you confirm or correct. By the 16th the liquidation is a review, not a month of catching up.

Who this is for

• SRL companies that need a euro ledger, correctly rated sales and purchases and monthly statements without a full ERP.
• Professionals and small studios that follow their own liquidation cycle and want the figures computed from real transactions.
• Restaurants, hotels and retailers mixing 22%, 10% and 4% lines.
• Exporters and intra-EU sellers who need non-imponibile supplies kept apart from domestic turnover.
• Italian subsidiaries of foreign groups that invoice in other currencies but keep the books in euro.

Questions Italian businesses ask