Superbonus: the budget pushes back to 2036 the credits banks and businesses were due to use in 2027. Without interest

4 November 2026, 16:13

The 2027 budget bill contains an article, number 37, that extends by nine years the maturity of a debt owed by the State, without asking permission of those who are owed it. These are the tax credits generated by the Superbonus for works paid for in 2023, the ones that homeowners transferred or turned into an invoice discount: whoever bought them, mostly banks and insurers but also businesses, uses them to pay less tax, one instalment a year. The last instalment, 20.5 billion, was to be used in 2027. The budget splits it into ten portions of about 2 billion, until 2036, and adds not one euro of interest.

The deal, at the outset, was simple: the Exchequer paid for most of the works with a discount on future taxes, and whoever advanced the money recovered it in four or five years. From the taxpayer who pays late, the State demands interest and penalties; for its own delay it has written an article of law. There is an aggravating factor too: a portion that cannot be used within its year is lost for ever, with no carry-forward and no refund, and ten years are ten chances of losing one.

The Treasury, meanwhile, gains without putting anything in. In the deficit accounts that expenditure was already recorded in 2023, so the postponement does not weigh on the balance; and by giving back the credit later, next year it will be able to borrow less on the market, with public debt lower by almost one point of gross domestic product and a few hundred million in interest saved. Those who wait, on the other hand, lose: split into yearly portions with no compensation for the wait, even with inflation lower than today's, those credits are already worth a tenth less now, at least 2 billion, borne mostly by the financial sector, from which the same budget already demands a levy of almost 6 billion. The smaller building firms, which still hold in their tax drawer the credits from the 2023 invoice discounts, see the money for works finished years ago drifting further away.

The postponement is the last item of a bill worth setting out in full. For Superbonus works alone, the credit schedule provided that between 2023 and 2027 the Treasury would accept 153.5 billion of them in payment: taxes that never reach the public coffers, and whose gap falls on all other taxpayers. That is more than is allocated in a whole year to the national health fund, which for 2027 is worth 146.3 billion. To get the building sites started, the State had invented the invoice discount and chains of credit transfers; to give back to those who financed them what they are owed, the hurry is over.

In 2036, when the last portion is used, the building sites of 2023 will be thirteen years old.

This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Foglio on 3 November 2026.