With the Ministerial Decree of October 6, 2021, the modalities for accessing the new tax bonus introduced by the Supports Bis Decree regarding expenses for restoration work on historic buildings that will be incurred in the years 2021 and 2022 were defined.
Specifically, the tax benefit invests the following types of interventions:
Maintenance, prevention and restoration interventions indicated in Article 29 of the Cultural Heritage Code
installation of systems that contribute to improving the conservation or safety of the property
elimination of architectural barriers
The property subject to intervention must be subject to cultural constraint (what is commonly referred to as "notification")
The tax benefit is 50% of the expenses incurred up to a maximum of € 100,000 and will be granted until the allocated funds, which for the years 2021 and 2022 amount to € 1 million each, are exhausted.
To access the bonus it will be necessary to submit an application to the General Directorate of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of the Ministry of Culture within the month of February of the year following the year in which the expenses were incurred.
It will be up to the superintendencies to ascertain the eligibility requirements for the tax benefit within two months of the application.
Therefore, the restoration bonus is in addition to the art bonus, risking to represent a further missed opportunity in achieving the goal of greater involvement of private investment in the field of cultural heritage, since the € 100,000 limit of expenses is certainly not appropriate with respect to interventions of a certain weight, especially if concerning prestigious properties, which involve, together with problems of a building nature, greater (and, often, more onerous) interventions of real artistic restoration, with the use of highly specialized workers and valuable materials.
Finally, the limitation posed by the small budget allocation represents a further critical element that will certainly have no small weight in the evaluations that owners will make about whether to undertake major restoration works.