Letting a Sappada home for the season: which contract, which taxes, which figures

Up to thirty days a home is let under the rules for short lets, explained in our guide to short-term rentals: a flat tax with two rates, a withholding by the platforms, guests' details sent to the Questura. From the thirty-first day the arrangement becomes a lease like any other. The taxes change, the formalities change, and first of all a contract has to be chosen.

In Sappada the question is a practical one. Summer brings 54.9% of tourist nights, winter 40.8%: an owner who uses a second home a few weeks a year can let it for the whole season to a family that drives up to ski every weekend, or to someone who works in the village from December to March, in the hotels, on the lifts, in the ski schools. These are two different tenants, and the law gives each of them a contract of their own.

For homes let «exclusively for tourist purposes» Law 431 of 1998 sets neither the duration nor the rent, and the Civil Code governs. The regional code that since 2025 regulates trade and tourism in Friuli Venezia Giulia repeats the same choice in an article of its own.¹²

Whoever comes to Sappada to work a season, on the other hand, lives in that house. For them the tourist purpose is missing, and the contract falls under the 1998 law: a four-plus-four, a transitory contract or, where an agreement allows it, an agreed rent of three years plus two. The ministerial decree of 16 January 2017 allows the transitory contract to last no more than eighteen months, tied to a temporary need of the owner or of the tenant, and written only on the template annexed to the decree. Among the typical needs the decree names mobility for work: the case of someone hired for the winter.³⁴

What counts is how the house is used, not the label on the contract. And a transitory contract that misses one of its conditions does not stay transitory: the decree brings it back to the length of a four-plus-four.³

The 2017 decree leaves a great deal to territorial agreements, the accords that owners' and tenants' associations sign for one municipality or a group of them and file with each. It is the agreements that list the accepted temporary needs and say how they are proven. And it is they that set the rent bands, which for transitory contracts, however, apply only in municipalities with more than ten thousand inhabitants. Sappada has 1,320: here the rent of a transitory contract is set by the parties.³⁴

We did not find an agreement for Sappada. The Comune's resolution on the 2026 ILIA rates does not mention one, although it recalls the regional reduction for homes at an agreed rent; none appears in the Region's publications or in those of the associations we were able to consult on 31 October 2026. Agreements, however, are filed with the Comune, and that is where the definitive answer has to be sought.⁴¹⁴

What this means. Without a local agreement the list to which the transitory contract must tie its need is missing, and the 2017 decree does not say how to make up for it: for municipalities without an agreement it only indicates the rent values, which Sappada does not need. A 2004 decree, written for agreed-rent contracts where the agreement is missing, first applies the bands of agreements signed in the past, updated with the ISTAT index; only for municipalities that never had an agreement does it refer to that of the «demographically homogeneous municipality at the shortest territorial distance», even in another region. For Sappada, which was in the province of Belluno until 2017, the first question is whether it had an agreement then. Whether the reference also covers transitory contracts, and where it leads, no source we read establishes: before signing, ask an owners' or tenants' association, which can also assist the parties.³¹⁵

For anyone letting to a seasonal worker the practical point remains the proof. Beyond thirty days the need is shown with documents attached to the contract: the letter of employment, the fixed-term work contract. Without them, the transitory contract does not hold.³

If the owner is a private individual, there are two ways to tax the rent. The first is the cedolare secca: 21% of the rent, and with it there is no more IRPEF and local surcharges, nor the registration and stamp taxes that the contract, its extensions and its termination would otherwise bear. From 1 January 2027 the same rule, at the same rate, sits in a new consolidated code of income taxes: for a season from December to March the provision to cite changes halfway through the contract, not the sum. The second is ordinary IRPEF, which brings with it the registration tax, 2% of the rent and at least €67 in the first year, and the stamp duty, €16 per copy for every four pages.⁷⁸¹⁹

The reduced flat tax, currently 10%, applies only to contracts at an agreed rent, and only in two groups of municipalities. The first is the one the CIPE declared to be under high housing pressure, in a 2003 list: for Friuli Venezia Giulia it includes, among others, Trieste, Udine, Gorizia and Pordenone, and for Veneto also Belluno; Sappada is not there, neither among the Friulian municipalities nor among the Venetian ones of the time. The second group comes from a 2014 law still in force, also taken up by the new code: municipalities for which, in the five years before 28 May 2014, a state of emergency was declared after a disaster. Sappada is one: while still in Veneto it was named among the municipalities hit by the autumn 2010 floods and by the bad weather between 30 January and 18 February 2014, for which the Council of Ministers declared a state of emergency in April 2014. The reduced rate does not, however, change the nature of the contract: it applies only to an agreed rent, and here the question of the agreement comes back. For your own contract, an accountant gives the confirmation.^8919212223

In its 2027 budget package, adopted on 28 October 2026, the government brings the agreed-rent rate down to 5%, and to 1% for tenants up to thirty-five. The press release does not say which municipalities it will apply to: if today's scope stays, it will apply in Sappada too, to agreed-rent contracts.¹⁶

Meanwhile ILIA is paid as always. A house let for the season remains a building other than the main residence: a rate of 0.7% if it is the first building, the single one each person may designate across the whole region through the online notice, and 1.06% otherwise. Regional law cuts the tax to 75% where the rent is an agreed one; in Sappada, with no agreement, that reduction depends on the same question as the paragraph above, and should be cleared with the Ufficio tributi before counting on it.¹⁴

Sappada's regulation, adopted in February 2025, lists among the grounds for the tax an overnight stay in properties intended for tourist letting, as well as in accommodation establishments: the regional law on local finance allowed this at the time. In December 2025 the new regional code of trade and tourism removed from that law the words on tourist letting, and the text in force allows the tax to be charged to those staying «in accommodation establishments». Serviced tourist flats, run with a notice to the municipal one-stop desk, are accommodation establishments; a house that a private owner lets for the season under the Civil Code is not.¹³²⁰²

So far the Comune has changed nothing: in February 2026 the municipal executive confirmed the rates with the same rules, and the service page still counts among those who pay anyone staying in properties intended for tourist letting. Whether the charge still has a basis in regional law nobody has clarified, neither the Region nor a court: before signing it is worth asking the Ufficio tributi in writing whether it will be charged, and by whom.²⁴²⁵ If it is due, the regulation asks €2.00 per person per night, for no more than 7 consecutive nights, with children who have not turned 10 on the day of arrival exempt: someone staying the whole season without a break pays at most €14, someone who comes and goes pays it on each stay. Nor does it say who has to collect it: the regulation names the manager of the establishment and, for short lets, whoever collects the rent or takes part in the payment, and a tourist lease longer than thirty days is neither.¹³

People working in the village do not owe it anyway. The regulation treats as residents the workers of businesses operating in the municipality, even for a limited period; and a transitory contract, which is not a tourist lease, falls outside the grounds for the tax.¹³

The ski season starts in December and ends between March and April: the contract is split across two years. For TARI the time in each year is counted separately, and from December to April it never reaches six months. So the tax stays with the owner in both years, and the same goes for a summer from June to September. It falls to the tenant only if they hold the house for over six months within a single year: a worker who stays from January to September, for example.¹¹¹²

The registration threshold, too, is measured over the year and with the same person. A family that comes back on two contracts, three weeks in January and three in March, goes beyond thirty days in total in the year: the contracts must be registered.⁶

For those not resident in Sappada a rule of the waste regulation also applies all year round, let or not: how many people live there is assumed from the size of the home, unless the owner declares otherwise.¹²

Hypothetical figures, real rules. A family from Udine owns a two-room flat in Sappada that they use in summer, cadastral income €500, designated as their first building through the Region's online notice. From December to March they let it to a retired couple from Padua who spend the whole winter up there: a lease for tourist purposes, €3,600 for the season, flat tax.

With a ski instructor hired for the winter the contract would change, not the taxes: a transitory contract on the decree's template, the letter of employment attached, no CIN and no tourist tax; for an instructor from outside the EU, the notice to public security within forty-eight hours. To compare this formula with letting by the week and with twelve months to a resident, the scenarios are on the Invest page.

• Decide whom you are letting to. People on holiday want a tourist lease and a CIN; people coming to work, a transitory contract.
• For a transitory contract, ask an association of owners or tenants which reference it uses for Sappada in the absence of an agreement, and have them assist with the drafting.
• Get the energy certificate before advertising, and include its clause in the lease.
• Register within thirty days, choosing the flat tax on the form.
• Write to the Ufficio tributi about the tourist tax for guests on holiday, before they arrive.
• Read the condominium rules: what they say about using the home also applies to a seasonal tenant.
• Put in writing who pays for what: heating, firewood or pellets, snow on the private stretch. In winter these are the items that weigh.

In Sappada we handle sales: we do not manage lettings and we do not draw up leases. What we can give you is something that helps you decide, a written valuation of the house, with every comparison in plain view. Whoever lets for the season sets side by side a rent that comes back every year, ILIA and the costs that remain; next to it, it is worth knowing the price the house would fetch today.

If you own a second home in Sappada and are choosing between keeping it, letting it and selling it, let us start from there.