Restaurant VAT (IVA) in Italy (10% food and wine at table, 22% bottles to go)

Written by Marco Azzari on 26 August 2026

This page is for operators costing a menu, not for a consumer VAT quiz. Rates below are the Italian national IVA rates in force: ordinary 22% (since October 2013), reduced 10%, minimum 4%. Always confirm with the Agenzia delle Entrate or your commercialista if you are filing. Wine Margin is not your commercialista.

The three rates (country, not just restaurants)

Source: DPR 633/1972, art. 16 and Tabella A (parte III, n. 120 for accommodation, n. 121 for somministrazione). A 5% rate also exists for a few specific goods and services; it is not the subject of this page.

At the table: food and wine are the same rate

If you serve food and drink for consumption on your premises, that is somministrazione. It is the reduced rate, 10%, for the food. Wine poured at that table is also 10%. So are the coperto and any service charge, because they are part of the same supply.

This is where Italy differs from many countries, where food is reduced and alcohol is pushed to the standard rate. Here, wine served at table sits at the same 10% as the pasta. Do not write internal costing stories that say "wine is taxed more than food" for service in the room. A commercialista will catch the comparison, and it is the comparison that is wrong, not the need to cost IVA.

The silent leak on a wine list is different: prices set years ago, from memory, never rebuilt with 10% in the true cost. Menu prices in Italy are shown to the guest IVA included, so the 10% is already inside the number on the card. That leak is real. It does not need a false tax story. How to price a wine list.

Takeaway and delivery: food stays, the bottle does not

Prepared food you sell to take away or deliver is generally treated at 10% too, so the kitchen side rarely changes when the pizza goes in a box. Check the specific case with your commercialista if you sell packaged products alongside it.

A bottle of wine sold to take away is a retail sale of a good, not a service at table. It goes out at 22%. The same Barolo is 10% when you open it in the room and 22% when the guest carries it home sealed.

Wine bars with a shop shelf and restaurants that sell bottles at the till live on this knife. Set separate departments (reparti) on the registratore telematico for table service and for bottles to go, so the receipt says which it was. A room that only serves at table mostly lives in 10% and should cost that way.

Hotel F&B

Accommodation is also in the 10% band (Tabella A, parte III, n. 120), and so is food and drink served to guests in the restaurant and the bar. The trap is the other direction: bottles sold in the lobby shop or packed as a gift to take home are retail at 22%. Treat them as a separate line unless your commercialista has documented otherwise. Do not copy the restaurant rate onto the gift box of Brunello.

What to do in the costing sheet

1. Separate table service from bottle retail in the till (separate reparti) if you do both.
2. Cost wine at 10% for anything poured or opened as a drink in the room.
3. Never apply 10% to sealed bottles sold to take away "because we are a restaurant." That is 22%.
4. Rebuild old selling prices from true cost. Card prices already include IVA: do not add 10% on top of a price that already had it, and do not ignore it because "we have always done it this way."

This page should be updated when the rates change. Until then, other Wine Margin articles should link here instead of restating the law.