Milan Judge Orders Seizure of 779 Million Euros From Airbnb Ireland (November 2023)

From the record. This is a look back at November 2023. The desk wrote it on 11 October 2026 from sources published at the time; Stay Gazette opened in July 2026 and did not report this as it happened.

On 6 November 2023, the Milan prosecutors' office said a judge had ordered the seizure of 779,453,912 euros from Airbnb Ireland Unlimited Company, the Irish company that owns the short-term rental platform, in an investigation into alleged tax evasion. Reuters gave the sum as 779.5 million euros, or $836.40 million.

The prosecutors alleged that the company had not withheld a 21% flat tax on rent that guests paid for Italian short-term rentals from 2017 to 2021. The order was also directed at three people under investigation who had held administrative posts in the company in those years. The reports did not name them.

Airbnb rejected the accusation. In a statement to AFP it said: “We are confident that we have acted in full compliance with the law”, and added that it intended to exercise its rights. The decree was a precautionary measure, and none of the reports read for this story said that any court had ruled on the criminal allegation.

What the prosecutors' note said

The prosecutors' note was signed by Milan prosecutor Marcello Viola, and Italian news outlets carried it on 6 November. As LaPresse reported it, officers of the Guardia di Finanza's provincial command in Milan were carrying out, on Viola's instruction, a preventive seizure decree that a preliminary investigations judge had issued in line with the prosecutors' request.

The allegation. The note said the company had not met the obligations of article 4 of decree-law 50 of 2017, and had not declared and paid, as withholding agent, sums equal to the amount of the seizure.
The arithmetic. Those sums were calculated at 21%, the rate of the tax known as the cedolare secca, on short-term rent of 3,711,685,297 euros that guests paid from 2017 to 2021 for properties advertised on the platform.
Where the rent went. The note said the amounts were afterwards passed on to the property owners, the hosts, net of the commission charged for using the platform. Il Sole 24 Ore noted that in theory the individual owners should have paid the tax on it, though there was no certainty that they had.
The alleged offence. Omitted tax declaration under article 5 of legislative decree 74 of 2000, said to have been committed from 30 January 2019 to 30 January 2023.
The stated grounds. The prosecutors cited later mandatory confiscation, and what they considered the danger that the consequences of the alleged offence would continue and worsen, including the economic damage to other operators who did act as withholding agents.

The order followed a tax audit of the company by the Guardia di Finanza's economic and financial police unit in Milan. Il Post reported that the judicial inquiry began in the spring of 2022 after a first tax check.

The reports did not describe the day in the same words. Reuters wrote that a judge had ordered the seizure from Airbnb's European headquarters in Ireland. AFP wrote that the financial police had seized over 779 million euros on the order of Milan prosecutors, and Il Sole 24 Ore, Domani and Il Post also wrote that the Guardia di Finanza had seized the money. The prosecutors' note, as LaPresse carried it, put it differently: officers were carrying out the decree, which was to be executed also through international judicial cooperation. Airbnb told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Italian police had presented it with a court order, which the company described as purporting to authorize the seizure. None of the reports read for this story said where any money was held, and Airbnb's report to the SEC did not say that any had been taken or frozen.

The 2017 law and two court rulings

The cedolare secca, as Il Post explained it, was an optional flat regime for tax on rent: always 21%, whatever the owner's declared income, and open only to private owners. Under a 2017 law it was due in certain cases on short-term rentals too, Il Post wrote. In Airbnb's own description to the SEC, that law made short-term rental platforms that handle payments hold back the income tax owed by Hosts, and gave them duties over tourist tax as well.

Airbnb challenged the law in the Italian courts and at the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The prosecutors said the company's duty to withhold at source had been confirmed twice: by the Court of Justice, in a judgment that the newspaper Domani dated to 22 December 2022, and by Italy's Council of State in ruling no. 9188 of 24 October 2023. Reuters called Airbnb's challenge unsuccessful.

Airbnb read the rulings differently. AFP reported that the Court of Justice had ruled in 2022 that member states could make platforms collect income taxes. But the court, Airbnb said, had also held that obliging a platform to appoint a tax representative, the requirement on which it said the 2017 law rested, breached EU law. The company pointed to an Italian court decision of October 2023 that it said upheld the European ruling, and said it still believed the law did not apply to it.

What Airbnb said

An Airbnb spokesperson told Reuters that Airbnb Ireland had been in talks with the Italian tax agency since June 2023 to settle the matter, and that the company was “surprised and disappointed” by the decision.

The company gave investors more detail in a Form 8-K report to the SEC, signed on 7 November 2023 by its chief financial officer. It said the Guardia di Finanza in Milan had produced a tax audit report in May 2023 that recommended formally assessing Airbnb Ireland for 779 million euros, and that the matter had then gone to the public prosecutors. It said it was unable to put a figure, or a range, on what it might lose, and that the amount could be material.

How Italy reacted

Reuters reported that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government was preparing to go after unpaid tax on short-term rentals, and wanted the 21% rate lifted to 26% for people who owned more than one such property. Il Post reported that the higher rate was written into the draft budget law, which parliament was still debating. Short Term Rentalz reported that Forza Italia, a governing party, wanted a national identification code for short-term rentals. The Local reported that a draft law released by the tourism ministry in June 2023 had proposed such a code and a two-night minimum stay in Italy's 14 metropolitan cities, and that Florence's city council had moved in October 2023 to ban new short-term tourist lets. La Nazione described the Florence measure as a stop to new ones in the historic centre.

Florence's mayor, Dario Nardella, said that the seizure showed deregulation and a lack of checks had become a very large problem in short tourist rentals, La Nazione reported on 7 November. He dismissed the planned rise to 26%, which he understood to apply from the second home upward, saying it would not change what owners did. He asked instead for mayors to be given zoning powers, so they could limit or block the growth of short tourist rentals in chosen districts. He added that the alleged evasion would have to be proven.

Bernabò Bocca, national president of the hotel association Federalberghi, called the seizure a positive signal and said that everyone pays taxes and it was right that Airbnb should too, La Nazione reported on 8 November.

The Gazette Verdict, looking back

For hosts, the Milan order settled less about Airbnb than about their own tax file. The prosecutors' figure was 21% of 3,711,685,297 euros of rent that, by their own note, had already been passed on to hosts with no tax withheld. Whoever won, that rent was income a host had to declare, and Il Sole 24 Ore observed that in theory the owners should have paid, with no certainty that they had. The state stood to collect up to 779 million euros if the seizure ended in the confiscation the prosecutors cited. Airbnb faced a sum it told the SEC could be material. Hosts faced a government that wanted 26% from owners of multiple rentals and a governing party that wanted an identification code for short-term rentals. The lesson for a host was plain: declare the rent, keep the payout records, and price as if the tax came off the top.

The other side

Airbnb's case deserves its full weight. The company said the European court had found the tax representative requirement, on which it said the 2017 law rested, contrary to EU law, and that an Italian court had upheld that ruling the month before. It had been talking to the tax agency since June 2023 when police arrived with the order. No report said a court had ruled on the criminal allegation. One further point is the desk's, not Airbnb's: if owners had paid tax on the rent they received, collecting 21% again from the platform would tax the same income twice. On that reading the order came before the argument was finished, and it told hosts little.

What it meant for hosts

In November 2023 the order asked nothing of hosts directly. Airbnb's position was that the law did not apply to it, and no report read for this story said that withholding had begun.

The rent was the host's to declare. On the prosecutors' account, payouts for 2017 to 2021 reached hosts net of Airbnb's commission, with no tax withheld. A host who had not declared that income had no withholding by the platform to rely on.
Budget for a higher rate on more than one property. The government wanted 26% for owners of multiple short-term rentals. It was a plan in November 2023 and had not become law.
Expect to be identified. A national identification code for short-term rentals had been proposed.
Watch the payout. If withholding at source arrived, the net payout would fall by the amount withheld, and the records would need to show it.

Sources

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Airbnb, Inc. Form 8-K, date of report November 6, 2023 (7 November 2023).
LaPresse, Airbnb, evase tasse per cinque anni in Italia: sequestrati 779 milioni di euro (6 November 2023).
Il Sole 24 Ore, Airbnb, maxi sequestro da 779 milioni di euro per evasione fiscale (6 November 2023).
Reuters (via Daily Maverick), Italy judge seizes 780 mln euros from Airbnb in tax probe (7 November 2023).
AFP (via Euronews), Italy police seize €779 million from Airbnb in tax probe (7 November 2023).
Short Term Rentalz, Italian judge orders seizure of €779m in Airbnb tax probe (7 November 2023).
Il Post, La Guardia di Finanza ha sequestrato 779 milioni di euro ad Airbnb (6 November 2023).
Domani, Sequestrati 779 milioni ad Airbnb per mancato versamento della “cedolare secca” (6 November 2023).
The Local Italy (with AFP), Italian police seize almost €800 million in unpaid tax from Airbnb (7 November 2023).
La Nazione, Airbnb accusata di frode fiscale, sequestro da 780 milioni. Nardella: "Assenza di controlli” (7 November 2023).
La Nazione, Doccia fredda Airbnb. Milioni evasi a Firenze. Sferzata del sindaco: "L’allarme era fondato" (8 November 2023).

Milan Judge Orders Seizure of 779 Million Euros From Airbnb Ireland