All owners of television equipment or any other equipment able or adaptable so to receive television are required by

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

law to have a

television licence A television licence or broadcast receiving licence is a payment required in many countries for the reception of television broadcasts, or the possession of a television set where some broadcasts are funded in full or in part by the licence ...

. The licence is used to part-fund the Italian public service broadcaster

RAI RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (; commercially styled as Rai since 2000; known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane) is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many ter ...

. The licence fee was introduced for owners of radio sets in 1923, and is currently governed by a law which dates back to 1938. The annual cost of the licence fee is around €100 once VAT (IVA) is accounted for. Unlike

television licensing in the United Kingdom In the British Islands, any household watching or recording television transmissions at the same time they are being broadcast is required by law to hold a television licence. This applies regardless of transmission method, including Terrest ...

, there is no exception for those who only use a TV to receive non-broadcast signals such as playing

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

s or watching

online video Internet video (online video / cloud-based video) is the general field that deals with the transmission of digital video over the internet. Internet video exists in several formats, the most notable being MPEG-4i AVC, AVCHD, FLV, and MP3. There ...

s. However, if the TV is physically unable to receive any broadcast signals (usually through removing the tuner or having the antenna input sealed through an operation called ''Sigillatura''), no set-top boxes are used to receive broadcasts and only using home media or IPTV, an exemption form may be filed every year to gain a one-year exemption from the tax. From January 2016 all Italian electricity bills will carry a monthly surcharge which will be the equivalent of one tenth of the annual TV licence fee.

Cost of the licence fee over time

The following table shows the cost of the licence fee excluding the base rate and valued-added tax.

Abrogation Proposal

On 5 January 2018, Italian former Prime Minister

Matteo Renzi Matteo Renzi (; born 11 January 1975) is an Italian politician who served as prime minister of Italy from 2014 to 2016. He has been a senator for Florence since 2018. Renzi has served as the leader of Italia Viva (IV) since 2019, having bee ...

proposed to abolish the RAI licensing fee.

Notes

Television in Italy Licensing Law of Italy {{Italy-media-stub