From the season of extraordinary incentives to a new equilibrium
In recent years, the energy redevelopment of Italian real estate has been strongly influenced by tax incentives. Ecobonus, Home Bonus, Sismabonus and above all Superbonus have changed the economic convenience of the interventions, bringing energy efficiency to the center of the decisions of families, condominiums and businesses.
The ENEA annual report on tax deductions 2026 analyzes the investments and energy savings obtained through Ecobonus, Home Bonus and SuperEcobonus. For the first two instruments it considers the interventions completed in 2025, while for the SuperEcobonus it examines the entire period 2020-2025.
The data on the Ecobonus already shows the change in phase. For the works completed in 2025, 305,035 descriptive sheets had been sent to ENEA at the date of the survey, corresponding to approximately 3.617 billion euros in investments and an estimated energy saving of 842.35 GWh per year. Compared to the data relating to 2024 available at the same time as the previous year, ENEA records a reduction of 47.81% in the number of cards, 42.52% in investments and 55% in estimated energy savings (National Agency for Energy Efficiency, 2026, p. 18).
However, the progressive reduction of incentives opens a different phase. The question is not simply to establish how many jobs will disappear with lower rates, but to understand which model can support redevelopment even without extraordinary fiscal measures.
It’s not just how much you incentivize, but how
One of the most interesting lessons of recent years concerns the architecture of incentives.
A traditional tax deduction typically requires the owner to initially incur the expense and recover the benefit in subsequent years through the tax system. The concrete possibility of making the investment therefore depends on the initial financial availability and the tax capacity of the taxpayer.
The transfer of credit and the invoice discount had profoundly changed this mechanism. Article 121 of the Relaunch decree had in fact allowed, for certain building concessions, to transform the deduction into a transferable tax credit. The original configuration also envisaged the possibility of subsequent sales, including those to credit institutions and financial intermediaries. The rules were then progressively modified and the circulation of credits was severely limited.
From an economic point of view, however, that experience deserves to be distinguished from the discussion on the size and cost of the Superbonus. The incentive rate and the transferability of the credit are in fact two different issues.
Transferable credit as fiscal and financial leverage
The transformation of the deduction into a transferable credit introduced a particular mechanism. The future tax benefit became an asset that could be sold to another operator. A company that acquired the credit through the invoice discount could, within the rules in force, transfer it and obtain liquidity without necessarily having to wait the years necessary for its tax use.
The draft was no longer exclusively fiscal. It also became financial.
In economic terms, especially when subsequent transfers were allowed, the credit took on some characteristics of a quasi-monetary instrument: it was expressed in euros, represented the possibility of paying off future tax obligations towards the State and could be transferred between different operators.
However, improper equivalence must be avoided. The tax credit was not money in the legal sense. Yet, from an economic point of view, transferability attributed a liquidity function to credit. A future fiscal asset could be mobilized in the present and used indirectly to finance production and investment.
The role of transferability in overcoming some constraints in accessing the incentive is also recognized by the Bank of Italy, which observes how the discount on the invoice and the transfer of credit effectively exceeded the limit represented by the taxpayer’s fiscal capacity, increasing the probability that the entire benefit could be used.
An intertemporal lever also for the State
Then there is a second aspect, less discussed but economically important. With a direct public contribution the State must immediately finance the expenditure. With a tax credit that can be used in subsequent years, however, the moment in which the investment is activated can be temporally distinguished from the moment in which part of the cost is absorbed through lower tax revenues.
The private individual can therefore receive a taxable asset today, while the State distributes the impact of the benefit on its tax flows over time. This is an intertemporal lever.
This dimension also emerges by distinguishing the accounting recording from the actual cash flows: the Bank of Italy notes that the statistical classification of credits affects the moment in which the benefit is recorded in the net debt, while the public debt is progressively affected as the cash outflows linked to the use of credits materialize.
Furthermore, in the presence of inflation, it is necessary to distinguish the nominal value from the real value. A credit of 10,000 euros nominally remains as such, but a lower tax revenue of 10,000 euros incurred a few years from now has a lower real value and present value than an immediate outlay of the same amount, depending on the price trend and the rate used to discount the flows.
This does not mean that inflation cancels out the cost of credit. Rather, it means that the temporal distribution of the burden can reduce its real economic weight compared to an equivalent immediate expense.
In the meantime, new revenues can be generated
If the incentive actually generates additional investments, in the period preceding the complete use of the credit the activated economic activity can produce new tax flows.
When credit allows investments to be made that otherwise would not have been made, the jobs generate demand for businesses and professionals, earned income and economic activity along the supply chain. This increased activity can in turn broaden tax bases and produce new tax and contribution revenues, while the credit is used progressively in subsequent years.
Of course, this does not imply that an incentive is automatically self-financing. To evaluate the actual cost of a measure, it is also necessary to consider the share of investments that would have been made in its absence.
The Bank of Italy’s estimates help to quantify this aspect. According to his assessments, approximately a quarter of the subsidized interventions would have been carried out even without the incentive. For the remaining part, the economic activity generated had effects on the GDP: the Bank of Italy estimates a multiplier close to unity, indicating that one euro of additional spending activated in the construction sector is corresponded, in approximate terms, to an increase in product of a similar size.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish nominal gross cost and net economic cost. Judging a tax credit solely on the basis of its face value may provide an incomplete representation of its economic effects.
The problem was not necessarily transferable credit
The critical issues that have emerged with the Superbonus – from the high cost to public finances to fraud, up to the effects on prices and continuous regulatory changes – do not necessarily imply that the principle of transforming a deduction into a transferable credit should be abandoned.
It is possible to conceptually separate the generosity of the incentive from its transferability. A particularly high rate can drastically reduce the economic contribution required from the beneficiary and weaken incentives to control prices. A transferable credit with lower rates, rigorous spending limits, preventive controls and rewards linked to energy results would instead represent an economically different instrument.
It is significant that even the Bank of Italy, while highlighting the critical issues of the Superbonus, does not envisage the abandonment of retraining incentives in its conclusions. On the contrary, he states that, once that measure has been overcome, Italy still needs to equip itself with a system of incentives to improve the energy efficiency of homes, indicating among the possible corrections rates far from 100%, spending ceilings and more effective monitoring of costs.
The question for the future should therefore be: is it possible to retain some of the tax credit’s ability to mobilize investment while avoiding the imbalances experienced in past years?
The experience of recent years suggests that the answer does not necessarily have to be the alternative between returning to large bonuses and abandoning incentives. The challenge is rather to identify an architecture capable of preserving the possibility of transforming fiscal support into effective investment, making it compatible with the sustainability of public finances.
