Building bonuses and abuses: first the amnesty, then the deductions

The current framework: legitimate state and art. 49 TUE

The current regulation links access to building bonuses to the legitimate state of the property through art. 49 of the TEU, which excludes benefits for unauthorized interventions carried out:

1. in the absence of title or in conflict with this;
2. on the basis of a title subsequently cancelled.

As regards point 1) the rule specifies that the contrast must concern violations of height, separations, cubic volume or covered surface area which exceed two percent of the prescribed measurements for each single real estate unit, or failure to respect the destinations and alignments indicated in the project, in the general master plan and in the detailed execution plans.

In practice, this means that all those that are generally considered as “construction site tolerances” already today do not jeopardize the legitimate status and therefore do not block the bonus. An essential discrepancy or a total absence of title, however, render the property devoid of legitimate status with certain impeding effects.

However, when faced with cases of actual abuse, the law requires the Municipality to report to the financial administration, within three months of the completion of the works or the SCIA, or of the cancellation of the building permit, any non-compliance which leads to the forfeiture of the permit. For its part, the Tax Office has the right to recover the taxes due, a right which however expires within three years from the date of receipt of the notification from the Municipality.

The Superbonus anomaly

Regarding the legitimate status of the property and the possibility of obtaining deductions, moreover, decree 77/2021 introduced a significant exemption for the Superbonus, making works possible without certification of the legitimate status in the CILAS, for the specific part concerning energy efficiency.

The Council of State, with sentence no. 8959/2025, has for its part clarified that the exemption for CILAS exclusively covers any discrepancies in the parts of the building involved in this type of work and nothing else. In essence, we read in the sentence, in the case of the Superbonus a procedure has been envisaged which is structurally and functionally independent from that of the assessment of building legitimacy and this “leads to the exclusion that any irregularities relating to parts of the property not affected by CILAS could preclude the entitlement of the benefit”.

Yes to benefits once the amnesty has been obtained

The bill, for its part, does not provide for any shortcuts or further simplifications from this point of view, nor does it propose similar solutions in any way. The text, in fact, limits itself to establishing that the implementing decrees of the provision will have to reorganize the provisions on the granting and provision of tax breaks, contributions and other benefits from the State or public bodies for the implementation of interventions on works that present building defects, with two specific objectives:

• strictly exclude the possibility of obtaining benefits, contributions and benefits in the presence of building defects that do not allow the issuing of amnesty certificates;
• allow the granting and disbursement of concessions and contributions in the presence of building defects which – due to the relative nature and extent, as well as the time in which the abuse was carried out or the qualification was obtained – can be remedied, within the limits of what is already provided for in current legislation provided that the title is previously obtained in amnesty.

This last indication is directly linked to what is currently foreseen regarding remediable abuses.

Save Home and asynchronous double compliance

The current text of the art. 36-bis of the TEU, introduced by the Save Home Decree, provides for a lightened double compliance amnesty process for the majority of abuses: the intervention must comply with the urban planning regulations in force at the time of the application and with the building regulations in force at the time of construction.

This mechanism has broadened the range of remediable abuses, making it possible to regularize partial discrepancies which, with double ordinary compliance (urban planning and construction, both in force at the time of construction) remained in an area which could effectively not be remedied.

Essential variations, abuses in areas subject to landscape restrictions without authorization, and works on properties restricted pursuant to the Cultural Heritage Code remain outside the amnesty’s perimeter. The Court of Cassation, with sentence no. 17292/2025, reiterated that for these cases the ban on benefits applies regardless of the extent of the abuse and the good faith of the owner.

The delegation therefore does not innovate anything from this point of view but only proposes a rationalization of the system. In any case, once the provision has been approved, the government will have 12 months to approve the delegated decrees and therefore make the new rules operational.